Quotes

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.

Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

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

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

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

I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40

No man should be judge in his own case.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

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.

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.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

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

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.