Jim Poor: That’s right!
Gordon: Only while imprisonment lasts, and in almost every instance it releases them a more dangerous menace than before their incarceration. And all because we deal with crime by a system childishly futile! As well might we sentence the lunatic to three months in an asylum, or the victim of smallpox to thirty days in the hospital, at the end of these periods to turn them loose, whether mad or sane, cured or still diseased.
Jim Poor (with great dignity): Now listen to me! You’re going to claim that criminals are mentally diseased. There’s nothing in that idea of their being abnormal.
Gordon: They must be! No normal man chooses sickness rather than health, or selects poverty when he might be rich! No one seeks suffering when he could be happy! Why, then, does a man follow crime when it brings him only misery in the end?
Jim Poor (with great satisfaction): As some great man once said—I forget who it was—“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
Gordon: Apply this very theory of Protection which Judge Dykeman urges.
Judge Dykeman: Just so. Protect ourselves against them.
Gordon: No! The protection of society would be doubly sure if we applied the great principle rightly. Our criminal law aims to protect society—in this it fails; it should aim to benefit the criminal—in that it could succeed.
Father Creedon: You’re right!
Gordon: Physicians do not give medicine to those who are well, but to the sick who need it. The criminal law should protect the criminal against himself and the influences which have overcome him. It should cure and armor him with self-respect and courage.