A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
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.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
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.
No man should be judge in his own case.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
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.
A sick person is a prisoner.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
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.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
