Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
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.
There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
