Quotes

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

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

We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.

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

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

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.

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.

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

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

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

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.

When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.

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.

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

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

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

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.

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.

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

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.