Quotes

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

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

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

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

I have never been contained except I made the prison.

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.

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.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

Justice renders to every one his due.

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 world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

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.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

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

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

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