Quotes

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.

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

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

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

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.

Justice renders to every one his due.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

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.

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.

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.

I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.