Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
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.
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.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
