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.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
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.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
