Care should be taken that the punishment
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.
They took away my money, my family, and
They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!
The reformative effect of punishment is
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Before we can diminish our sufferings
Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
We are prisoners of ideas.
We are prisoners of ideas.
On average, drug prisoners spend more
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
There is a point at which even justice
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
I never told a victim story about my
I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman
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?
It is safer that a bad man should not be
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
It is impossible to go through life
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
The world itself is but a large prison,
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail,
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.
Fast closed with double grills
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.
Corporal punishment falls far more
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
The uneven impact of actual enforcement
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.
No written law has been more binding
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
I just remember that disturbing feeling
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment
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.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
How dreadful it is when the right judge
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
The severest justice may not always be
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.