One crime has to be concealed by another.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.
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.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
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.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
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!
Crimes generally punish themselves.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
