The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
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.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
