Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
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.
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?
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
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.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
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.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
