One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
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.
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.
Man is condemned to be free.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
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.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
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.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Justice renders to every one his due.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
