Quotes

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

No man should be judge in his own case.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

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

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

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

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

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.

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

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.