What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
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.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
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.
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.
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.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
