Jennette Lee

“ Why, you know, and I know, that half the men in prison ought never to have been sent there. It's bad for them—bad for society."
He stirred uneasily. "That isn't our affair," he said. "Our business is to catch 'em. What becomes of 'em after that doesn't concern us!"
"It concerns me!" said Milly. "I got so I couldn't sleep nights, thinking of men in prison that would never have been there if it hadn't been for me! Men that I knew weren't really bad—drunk or mad or something! I made up my mind that if I did the catching, I was going to have something to say about the punishment." ”

“ You know, better than you think you do, when a man's sincere. And they want to be straight! Why, I've seen them sometimes, Tom"—she leaned forward eagerly—"I've seen them try—when they got the idea that all they had to do was to tell a straight story—I've seen them try till it was pathetic.
"They are pathetic!" she declared. "And they are sick—some of them—they can't tell the truth, no matter how hard they try.
"A man that can't tell the truth ought to be in prison just as much as if he had a temperature. ”

“ We put a man in prison. Of course, he doesn't like it——"
"Well, hardly," said Tom dryly.
"But, after all, the worst punishment for most of us is—living right along in the world and knowing everybody has found you out and despises you and thinks of it every time they see you. That's what his wife and daughters have to live through every day, and his mother. They have to face the dis grace everywhere they go. I'd like to fix things so it wouldn't come quite so hard on them. . . . I want to say what shall be done with the criminal I catch!" ”