We are all capable of becoming something monstrous.

Every society has the criminals that it deserves.

I need not pause to explain that crime is not a disease. It is criminology that is a disease.

...And eventually, he (Charles Manson) testified to an empty court, as Bugliosi had convinced the presiding judge Older, that Manson's hypnotic powers might convince the jury he was innocent.

Genetics, accidents of birth or events in early childhood have left criminals' brains and bodies with measurable flaws predisposing them to committing assault, murder and other antisocial acts. .... Many offenders also have impairments in their autonomic nervous system, the system responsible for the edgy, nervous feeling that can come with emotional arousal. This leads to a fearless, risk-taking personality, perhaps to compensate for chronic under-arousal. Many convicted criminals, like the Unabomber, have slow heartbeats. It also gives them lower heart rates, which explains why heart rate is such a good predictor of criminal tendencies. The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, for example, had a resting heart rate of just 54 beats per minute, which put him in the bottom 3 per cent of the population.

If a deadly snake slithering around in a pre-school bit a child, would you box it up for a month as punishment, and then release it to prey upon the children once again?

Vagrancy laws and other laws defining activities such as "mischief" and "insulting gestures" as crimes were enforced vigorously against blacks. The aggressive enforcement of these criminal offenses opened up an enormous market for convict leasing.

The deviant and the conformist...are creatures of the same culture, inventions of the same imagination.