Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
