Quotes

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

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

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.

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.”

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.

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

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

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

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?

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

One crime has to be concealed by another.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

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.

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

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

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

He who profits by a crime commits it.