James Q. Wilson Quotes

Police ought to protect communities as well as individuals.... Just as physicians now recognize the importance of fostering health rather than simply treating illness, so the police - and the rest of us - ought to recognize the importance of maintaining, intact, communities without broken windows.

Donald Trump and I are going to make sure that law enforcement have the resources and the tools to be able to really restore law and order to the cities and communities in this nation.

Tonight, I propose a 21st Century Crime Bill to deploy the latest technologies and tactics to make our communities even safer. Our balanced budget will help put up to 50,000 more police on the street in the areas hardest hit by crime, and then to equip them with new tools from crime-mapping computers to digital mug shots. We must break the deadly cycle of drugs and crime.

Law and order is a social service. Crime and the fear which the threat of crime induces can paralyse whole communities, keep lonely and vulnerable elderly people shut up in their homes, scar young lives and raise to cult status the swaggering violent bully who achieves predatory control over the streets. I suspect that there would be more support and less criticism than today's political leaders imagine for a large shift of resources from Social Security benefits to law and order - as long as rhetoric about getting tough on crime was matched by practice.

And not go to things that sound good that really did not have the kind of impact that we would want. Who disagrees with keeping neighborhoods safe?

It is high time for society to stop worrying about the criminal, and to let the criminal start worrying about society. And by "society" I mean you.

Nothing is more devastating to a community than out-of-control crime.

As we saw in the Queen's Speech, anti-social behaviour - a phenomenon that I believe to be a genuine worry that is also being fed by a lot of scare stories - is the political theme of the moment.

Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.

Being home secretary involves having to face some of the worst of human behaviour and challenges of modern society.

Many of us are under the delusion that the police exist solely to deal with crime and keep us safe. That is to ignore the major focus of many of today's top cops on managing reputation - both of their force and, by default, their careers.

We can play politics, or we can reduce crime.

It is time to put more cops on the beat and remove our most violent repeat offenders from our neighborhood streets.

We need to send a clear message to gang members that violent crime will not be tolerated.

But in my district I have heard from law enforcement officials and across the State of Florida about how much this JAG funding helps them fight crime, and to protect and serve the citizens within their jurisdiction.

If the police can shoot a criminal, then why can't we take action against those who are poisoning our society?

I look forward to continuing to serve the people of New York and making our state a safer place to live, work and raise families for many years to come.

It's in my own interest - it's in everybody's interest - to have streets that are safe, children that are educated, and drug use that's diminished, crimes that are not affecting us.

Regular, everyday working people in my state recognize that communities are going to have crime. They know that. The question is what do communities do about it?

No one wants dangerous criminals in our communities.

A 24-hour police surveillance system will act as a deterrent for anti-social elements.

When crime was spiking in our communities, Dad wrote the crime bill that put 100,000 cops on the streets and led to an eight-year drop in crime across the country.

Let's talk about the real issues of crime which people are worried about. What people are worried about is the rise in violent crime. We believe that more community policemen and women are part of the answer to this.

Our law enforcement must be given every tool available to protect children from predators and parents need to know who is living in their community.

The question of crime is one of concern to everybody. But the position is that the security forces in our country for the last four decades did not concentrate on suppressing crime. Their main objective was to suppress, to crush political activity. And in the process, crime grew to unacceptable proportions. And criminals were able to form powerful syndicates, and they virtually took over the control of the life of the community in certain areas.