Quotes

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

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

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.

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

A sick person is a prisoner.

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

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

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

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.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.