Quotes

Man is condemned to be free.

Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.

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.

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.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

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.

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.

When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.