The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
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?
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
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 safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
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 most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
A sick person is a prisoner.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
