If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
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.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
We are prisoners of ideas.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
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.
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
