Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Man is condemned to be free.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
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.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
No man should be judge in his own case.
