Quotes

Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

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.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

Governments have tried to stop crime through punishment throughout the ages, but crime continued in the past punishment remains. Crime can only be stopped through a preventive approach in the schools. You teach the students Transcendental Meditation, and right away they’ll begin using their full brain physiology sensible and they will not get sidetracked into wrong things.

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

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

While crime is punished it yet increases.