Quotes

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

No man should be judge in his own case.

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

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

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

Man is condemned to be free.

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

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.

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.

No crime has been without a precedent.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.