Quotes

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

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.

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

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.

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

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

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

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

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

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

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.

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.

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

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.