No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
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.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
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.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
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.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
