Quotes

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.

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.

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

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

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

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.

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

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

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.

Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

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.

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

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

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

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.

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

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.