P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

[We have to make] a distinction between dangerous violent criminals and people who are engaged in non-violent criminal activities….Your taking somebody out of the economy, breaking up their families, and putting them in a place with hardened criminals. I think that it is pretty hard to argue that has been a positive long-term result.

I've been in jail a couple times. I've been caught shoplifting.

People with mental illnesses are dying on our streets. More than 350,000 are in jails and prisons. Most are people whose only real crime is they got sick.

I am against the death penalty.

Until 1869, when they were banned, debtors' prisons were the great incinerators of British reputations. Those who were unable to pay their bills were jailed until their creditors were paid - an unlikely event, given that the prisoner was unable to work.

The consequences of a crime should not be out of proportion to the crime itself.

If you want to act like a butthead, your butt is going to get locked up.

I am proud of being in a U.S. federal prison and surviving it.

The Federal prison population has increased more than 7-fold over the past 20 years.

I went to jail at 16 for stealing tires off Cadillacs. When I got out I said, Never again.

In Mexico, the people who are put in jail are all the wrong people. The good people are in jail.

The State may, indeed, make the drinking of one drop of liquor an offense to be punished by imprisonment, but it would be an unheard-of cruelty if it should count the drops in a single glass and make thereby a thousand offenses, and thus extend the punishment for drinking the single glass of liquor to any imprisonment of almost indefinite duration.

If three men carry off a free born girl, they shall be compelled to pay 30 shillings. If there are more than three, each one [additional] shall pay 5 shillings. Those who commit rape shall be compelled to pay 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

I was happy to be with my parents. I didn't see very much of them, so I was very happy when my father was there and out of jail.

I had been imprisoned three times and had twice been incarcerated in a madhouse.

Jack Abramoff is the world's best lobbyist - for the Federal Penitentiary System.

I don't even think jail helps Gucci Mane. It clearly doesn't.

Don't hire a prison consultant.

My earliest memories are going into prisons. Going through metal detectors, getting searched by guards.

People who do crime do it for reward. But you end up in jail - that's no reward. Through crime, your ambitions are low.

The streets will get you in jail.

If people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.

Crime is not punished as an offense against God, but as prejudicial to society.

What every American should know is that we have more people in jail today than any other country on Earth, more than China. We have some 2.2 million people in jail. What that means is that a lot of lives are being destroyed.

If you tell the truth all day long, you will end up in jail.