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.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
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.
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 perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Justice renders to every one his due.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
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!
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.
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.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
