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.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.
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%.
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.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
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.
They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
