Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
