When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
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.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
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.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
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.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
