Quotes

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

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

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.

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.

I have never been contained except I made the prison.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

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.

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

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

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

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.