Benjamin Rush Quotes

I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them…

We want a state of things in which crime will not pay.

Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.

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

It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them.

Severity of punishment is not the cure for crime. Certainty and promptness of punishment rather than severity are more effective. There was a time, as we all know, when in England considerably more than two hundred separate offenses were punishable by death. Nevertheless, that period was one of the most lawless and violent known to history. The utter failure of the drastic technique in the suppression of crime is universally acknowledged.

The key for members of the public is that they want criminals to be punished. They want them taken off the streets. They also want criminals who come out of prison to go straight.

There's a simple way to solve the crime problem: obey the law; punish those who do not.

The essence to reducing violent crime in our society is to take these people [criminals] off the street.

There's nothing we [the Congress] can do to eliminate crime.

Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment.

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

Men are not hang'd for stealing Horses, but that Horses may not be stolen.

Arresting people is not going to lower the crime rate

You will feel the full force of the law and if you are old enough to commit these crimes you are old enough to face the punishments. And to these people I would say this: you are not only wrecking the lives of others, you are potentially wrecking your own life too.

America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore.

Crime is naught but misdirected energy.

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.

I don't believe in killing people. I believe in locking you up for the rest of your life.

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

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty.

Criminals are punished, that others may be deterred.

Bad people should be incarcerated.

In all governments fear is recognized as one of the grounds for the enforcement of law. In even the freest nations and under the highest form of civilization the public opinion that administers law makes its demand partly in the interest of essential right, partly with the instinct of self-preservation against the forces of evil, and partly for the punishment of wrong. Punishment in itself is not reformatory; it is retributive; it is deterrent; it plays upon fear.