Crimes generally punish themselves.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
Justice renders to every one his due.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
A sick person is a prisoner.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
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.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
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.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
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.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
