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?
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
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.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
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.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
