Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
Justice renders to every one his due.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
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.
