David Gauke Quotes

I want to see prison numbers come down. We need better custody that cuts reoffending and crime. And we need to ensure judges, magistrates and the public have full confidence in the other penalties available.

Punishment is not for revenge, but to lessen crime and reform the criminal.

The United States imprisons many non-violent offenders who could instead be required to pay fines, perform community service, and make restitution to their victims… Maintaining our vast network of prisons consumes resources that could be better spent on education and other crime prevention efforts... Rather than reforming offenders, prison too often degrades and dehumanizes prisoners, making the task of rehabilitation and reentry into society even more difficult.

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.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

Retribution is no longer the dominant objective of the criminal law. Reformation and rehabilitation of offenders have become important goals of criminal jurisprudence.

If we have to build more prisons, it means we have failed.

We spend $94,000 per prisoner [per year]. There is a tension between punishment and making people’s lives better and I don’t actually think that we have done the second part well. We put people in prison and expect them to come out

Probation is a less-well-known branch of our justice system, compared with, say, police and prisons, but that doesn't make it any less important. Hundreds of thousands of offenders each year are rehabilitated back into society by probation, which is crucial for the public's safety.

Locking people up without reducing the risk of them committing new crimes against new victims the minute they get out does not make for intelligent sentencing.

The purpose of the criminal justice system is both to rehabilitate and to punish. If we can rehabilitate somebody, that's a huge, huge win.

Unfortunately, if the man who leaves the prison gates is just as likely or - as is sometimes grievously the case - more likely to offend as he was when he entered them, then we fail not only the individual but public safety as well.

For the offenders completing these short sentences whose lives are destabilised, and for society which incurs a heavy financial and social cost, prison simply isn't working.

We are a humane society, and one which believes that we have to help rehabilitate offenders so they turn away from crime.

This is not rocket science. If you mentor and support people when they leave prison they're less likely to reoffend.

All emphasis in American prisons is on punishment, retribution, and disparagement, and almost none is on rehabilitation.

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

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

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

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.

In the long run, a flexible sentencing procedure which works to rehabilitate offenders offers the best hope in the majority of cases in the Federal courts.

We can agree that keeping serious criminals in prison is an effective means of preserving public safety, but we must also recognize that the axiom of 'putting people in jail and throwing away the key' does not apply to all offenders universally and can actually be counterproductive.

A duty to the public must be to stop prisoners reoffending through successful rehabilitation.

I think one of the keys to any crime-prevention program that's got to be developed is to focus on punishment - to let people know that there is a sanction and a punishment for hurting others.

Whilst long prison sentences will always be right for those who commit the most serious crimes, particularly of a violent or sexual nature, the fact is that the vast majority of all offenders will at some point be released.