Quotes

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.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

Crimes generally punish themselves.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

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.

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.