Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
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.
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.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
No crime has been without a precedent.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
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.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
