Quotes

A sick person is a prisoner.

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 is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

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.

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.

Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

We are prisoners of ideas.

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.

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

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.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.