Richard Whately Quotes

Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides, the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deterred anyone from the commission of a crime, because in committing it the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances.

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

I have inquired for most of my adult life, about studies that might show that the death penalty is a deterrent, and I have not seen any research that would substantiate that point.

it is the certainty of being punished and not the horrifying spectacle of public punishment that must discourage crime

No severity of punishment deters when detection is uncertain, as it always must be.

Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.

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

I think it's common sense to say that the longer away from a crime it gets prosecuted, the less deterrent effect there is.

It is important that gang members are aware that if they engage in aggravated assault, maiming, kidnapping, or manslaughter that they will receiving a minimum sentence of 30 years.

What makes someone too mentally ill to be executed? There is no clean answer to this question. But the attempt to answer it consumes substantial resources. If capital punishment had a demonstrable impact on crime, it might make sense to struggle with such a difficult balancing. But any deterrent effect is trivial at best, so the effort devoted to these decisions is wasted.

There is no deterrent effect whatsoever by the presence of the death penalty.

And so you take criminal caitiffs, murderers, and the like, and hang them on gibbets "for an example to deter others." Whereupon arise friends of humanity, and object. With very great reason, as I consider, if your hypothesis be correct. What right have you to hang any poor creature "for an example"? He can turn round upon you and say, "Why make an 'example' of me, a merely ill-situated, pitiable man? Have you no more respect for misfortune? Misfortune, I have been told, is sacred. And yet you hang me, now I am fallen into your hands; choke the life out of me, for an example! Again I ask, Why make an example of me, for your own convenience alone?

This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.

The death penalty is no more effective a deterrent than life imprisonment... It is also evident that the burden of capital punishment falls upon the poor, the ignorant and the underprivileged members of society.

The death penalty experiment has failed.

There is a legitimate argument over whether the death penalty effectively deters violent crime, although my personal observation is that not one of the criminals who have been executed over the years has ever killed again.

I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of society. I reject the notion that the death penalty has any essential deterrent effect on potential offenders. I am convinced that the contrary is true - that savagery begets only savagery.

Penalties serve to deter those who are not inclined to commit any crimes.

I support public hanging for its deterrent effect.

The aim of the law is not to punish sins, but is to prevent certain external results.

It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them.

The end of punishment, therefore, is no other than to prevent the criminal from doing further injury to society, and to prevent others from committing the like offence. Such punishments, therefore, and such a mode of inflicting them, ought to be chosen, as will make the strongest and most lasting impressions on the minds of others, with the least torment to the body of the criminal

The argument most often cited in support of capital punishment is that the threat of executions deters capital crimes more effectively than imprisonment. This claim is plausible, but the facts do not support it. The death penalty fails as a deterrent

Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.

The policy of depriving capital executions of their present publicity is well worthy of careful revision; and Sir James Graham, in obedience to your Majesty's desire, will bring the subject under the notice of his colleagues. He is disposed to think that the sentence might be carried into execution in the presence of a Jury to be summoned by the Sheriff with good effect; and that the great body of idle spectators might be excluded, without diminishing the salutary terror and awful warning which this extreme punishment is intended to produce on the public mind. In dealing, however, with a matter in which the community has so deep an interest, it is prudent not to violate public opinion, and caution is necessary before a change of the long-established usage is proposed.