Quotes

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

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

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

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

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

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

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

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

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

If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.

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.

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

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.