Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Justice renders to every one his due.
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.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
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.
He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
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.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
