Quotes

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

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.

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

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

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

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

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.

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

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.

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.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

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.

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.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

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.