Quotes

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

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.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

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.

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

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

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

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.

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

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

Justice renders to every one his due.

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

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

Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

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

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

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.