Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
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.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
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.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
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.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
Vices are not crimes.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
A sick person is a prisoner.
