Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
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.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
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.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
