20,000 Years in Sing Sing Quotes

“Since time began man has been struggling with the problem of behavior. In early days, when almost every human attribute had its counterpart in celestial spheres, with favorite gods who presided over particular human emotions, an offense by a mortal was interpreted as an affront to the Deity. Only the death of the offender could propitiate the anger of the offended god. It is not surprising, therefore, that a parallel has been drawn between the ancient custom of human sacrifice and capital punishment of today. Human sacrifices by way of propitiation to the old nebulous fancies of theology; capital punishment in deference to the modern, nebulous god known as public sentiment. One was, of course, as impotent as the other is fallacious.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“Guidance rather than deterrence is the answer to crime. It is the only course that promises permanence. Prison walls must not be permitted to bar society's primary obligation to its faltering wards.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“Prison administration is concerned with this phase of procedure because of the generally accepted notion--in and out of prisons--that money can get away with anything. A most unwholesome influence when your objective is to kindle a proper respect for the law and conformity among men doing time within the walls!”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“Prison is the easiest way out for authority, as locks and keys are the warden's simplest tools. It does not require strong imagination or unusual ability to keep men in their cells.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“Society's attitude toward crime and criminals is reflected by the laws on its statue books. As long as it views these problems through the prisons and fixed sentences that permit little if any discretion in the releasing or discharging delinquents and prisoners, there will be no permanent solution.
Time was when a person with smallpox was lashed through the public streets as "possessed" of evil; when the disordered mind was tortured to free it from the devil. We have passed also through the periods of theoretical, hereditary crime; of criminality due to physical deformities, of limitation of will, of freedom of will, of glandular defects, and the many other pet notions of theorists and investigators.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“What is this thing Law that brands man with the indelible insignia of shame from which he can never escape?
Law is the process by which one section of the people tries to impose its will upon another.
In the name of the Law, a crimson trail has established itself in the wake of our civilization.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“To Max the law did not inspire respect but fear. Whom men fear, they do not respect.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“Yet it was Emerson who said that "I have never heard of a crime which I might not have committed.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“I am not afraid to die," he said. "We've all got to die. I've never had a headache, never had tuberculosis, or rheumatism, never been sick. I'm glad to die in the possession of all my faculties, but I am worried about those two children of mine. They will be marked for life." He paused for a moment, then he added thoughtfully. "And what is more and harder to bear, Warden, is that killing me won't help anything or anybody. This business of capital punishment is all wrong." He shrugged his shoulders.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“I accompanied him to the first aid clinic to look at the would-be suicide. He was unconscious. Nurses were already on the spot with one of the prison doctors, all doing their best to revive him. I remained there until I saw his eyes flicker and was assured that the man would be saved. He was sent to the main hospital and I returned to the witnesses waiting to proceed to the death chamber.
We had just saved one man from self-inflicted death. Now we were about to execute the mandate of the law and put another to death. One wanted to die and couldn't. The other wanted to live and had to die.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“Prisoners resent being questioned about crime motives. That is why psychiatry and psychological treatment in prisons have accomplished little with prisoners. The trouble is that we expect too much of the man in prison. We want him to be better than we are, or hope to be. On a par with Caesar's wife--beyond suspicion. Let us be frank about it. We are mortally afraid of him.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“The idea of having baseball games at Sing Sing and bringing in a high school team to play with the crooks at Sing Sing! That's the way to encourage crime." To which I might have replied in the words of another publicist: "Practice makes perfect. Fourteen bases were stolen during the first game played by Sing Sing convicts.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“The gentleman in charge of the Correspondence Courses was plainly doubtful about the prisoner of middle age who was anxious to enroll in a course in "Eugenics." He was patient with the ambitious applicant and was able to ascertain, after considerable questioning, that it was "Economics" the prisoner had in mind. But then Eugenics and Economics are more closely related than that prisoner imagined.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“You've been with us a long time, Warden," he continued. "Have you ever found a man who really wants to be bad? Unconventional, yes. Contrary, perhaps. Maybe the fellow's stupid or selfish. But no one starts on this kind of life by wanting to be merely bad. You know how old Shakespeare put it. 'There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.' And when the public makes up its mind that a fellow is bad, he will become bad, even if he had no ambitions along that way originally.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“What Mr. Osborne did not see clearly was that prisoners are, actually, people who have quarreled with the law. That regardless of motivating forces or underlying causes prisons are communities of nonconformists.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“more law, more crime, more rules, more violations”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing

“He proceeded on the theory that confinement within the walls of the prison was punishment. That the law never intended to confine prisoners within the prison. From a moral point of view, it was putting the prisoner in double jeopardy. Actually it was a double punishment.”
― Lewis E. Lawes, Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing