The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
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.
We are prisoners of ideas.
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.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
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.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
