John Dewey Quotes

Punishment can do a lot for criminals, and send a message to the rest of society.

Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try - by punishing the troublesome - to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously.

It may seem a hard task to condemn fellow creatures to long years of confinement in prison, but it is not so hard if they clearly deserve it.

I'd rather lock somebody up and throw away the key and put them in hard labor, the ultimate penalty that the law will allow, but I'm opposed to the death penalty

The law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.

Given the devastation that crime can visit on families and communities, I will err on being a little too tough on crime than being too soft on crime.

I prefer a prison full of criminals than a graveyard full of innocent people.

Have not prisons - which kill all will and force of character in man, which enclose within their walls more vices than are met with on any other spot of the globe - always been universities of crime?

I was not sympathetic to the assumption that criminals had radically different motivations from everyone else.

Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.

All issues of crime are better addressed at the state level.

You know what an effective deterrent to crime is? Jail! And do you know what kind of criminal penalty actually makes people think twice about committing crimes the next time? The kind that actually comes out of some individual's pocket, not fines that come out of the corporate kitty.

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.

We make no apology for people who should be in prison being in prison.

There are a lot of messages that need to be sent to the criminal who is out there dealing in this on the streets of the United States. We need to send the message of swiftness and certain punishment.

And some people, you've got to lock up. If you don't, they're going to hurt you.

The judge said I was a menace to society because I had put crime on a scientific basis.

If I’m ever released, I do the same again. Exactly the same.

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

Of all the remedies a civilized society uses to punish people for committing a crime, I don't think killing people is one of them.

It [the death penalty] is a phony issue. To pretend the death penalty is going to end crime in the United States is to fool people, to promote public ignorance.

Bad people should be incarcerated.

There are eight kinds of punishment: fine, fetters, flogging, retaliation in kind, civil disgrace, banishment, slavery, death

How come life in prison doesn't mean life? Until it does, we're not ready to do away with the death penalty. Stop thinking in terms of "punishment" for a minute and think in terms of safeguarding innocent people from incorrigible murderers. Americans have a right to go about their lives without worrying about these people being back out on the street. So until we can make sure they're off the street permanently, we have to grit our teeth and put up with the death penalty

… people who are armed make comparatively unattractive victims. A criminal might not know if any one civilian is armed, but if it becomes known that a large number of civilians do carry weapons, criminals will become warier.