Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
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.
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.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
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.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
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%.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
