If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
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.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
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.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
We are prisoners of ideas.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
