We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
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.
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?
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.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
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.
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
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.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
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.
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.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
