Terry Pratchett Quotes

I never sympathise with the accused unless there's a chance the accused is not guilty, but I certainly don't ever sympathise with the criminal.

It is better that a guilty man should not be brought to trial than that he should be acquitted.

Within the realm of the law, we have to be as severe as we can. We will not simply give capital punishment to all criminals, but those who deserve it will get it.

The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem.

There are two forms of justice. There is what is called retributive justice and there is restorative justice.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent.

You kill men for the wrongs they have done, not the wrongs that they may do someday.

The crime should be punished no matter whether poverty or wealth caused it to occur, because the crime is wrong.

If pimps and thieves everywhere were always punished, honest people would all believe themselves always to be innocent.

But if you go over the line, you don't want to get stuck in a Nevada State court room. Honestly, because Nevada has been doing a good job of putting California criminals in jail. I mean, we couldn't put OJ in jail, but they did. We couldn't put Paris Hilton in jail, but they did.

The laws only can determine the punishment of crimes, and the authority of making penal laws can only reside with the legislator, who represents the whole society united by the social compact.

I find the idea of vigilante justice very attractive. I like the idea that the murderer decides that this person has gone too far, and nothing will happen to him unless she does something to stop him.

In Scotland over many years we have cultivated through our justice system what I hope can be described as a 'culture of compassion.' On the other hand, there still exists in many parts of the U.S., if not nationally, an attitude towards the concept of justice which can only be described as a 'culture of vengeance.'

Successful crimes alone are justified.

A criminal trial is never about seeking justice for the victim. If it were, there could be only one verdict: guilty.

When I was young and we got caught pinching apples, we got a smack from the local policeman. Today if that happened he would be sued. There is a tendency to punish the victim, not the criminal. If someone broke into my house or my mum's house, I worry that the burglar has more rights than me.

The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.

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.

The American people do not want people thumbing their nose at the law. It undercuts the very fabric of our society and the system of civil justice and of criminal justice as well.

I love criminal law. It must be the Dostoyevskian streak in me. I'm fascinated by the accumulation of forces that make people behave in ways that everybody else hates.

It is the crime not the scaffold which is the disgrace.

Man is unique in creation because he has a sense of justice and truth. We spend billions of dollars each year to set up court systems to see that justice is done, and we build prisons for those who transgress the laws we enact.