History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
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.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
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.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
Vices are not crimes.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
