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?
One crime is everything; two nothing.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
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.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
Justice renders to every one his due.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
