Beth Phoenix Quotes

Letting people out of prison without professional staff to oversee their rehabilitation is irresponsible.

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.

They [prisons] are not designed to rehabilitate the - the inmate, though the, the public propaganda is that this is their function.

Unfortunately, the elimination of incentives such as parole, good time credits and funding for college courses, means that fewer inmates participate in and excel in literacy, education, treatment and other development programs.

I didn't spend a lot of time with prison guards, but my father was an assistant district attorney for a long time so I was always hearing stories about prisoners and prison guards.

We have determined as a society, as a country, as a people, that the incarceration and the supervision and the specific fines for a particular crime are that person's debt to society.

Sixty per cent of people entering prison today are illiterate.

For the past seven years we have been cracking down on crime in Missouri, passing tougher laws for drug crimes and sex offenses and requiring prisoners to serve more time.

Maybe I won't stay out of prison. Who knows?

I believe, and I may be wrong, the system sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate, but they don't do that in a lot of cases.

In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision than there's available... in America right now.

Think about how much it costs to incarcerate someone. Do we want them just sitting in prison, lifting weights, becoming violent and thinking about the next crime? Or do we want them having a little purpose in life and learning a skill?

I had a great time on The Shield. From working on it I have a totally different view of law enforcement.

The people deemed too dangerous to release therefore become the very people released with no conditions and no supervision.

The newest "fad" of the penologists is "indeterminate sentences".... This plan ... will work first rate if God will agree to act as the discharging officer. It is hardly likely, though, that he would accept the position: he has long been out of politics.

Our job is to incarcerate offenders and not hospitalize sick people…. We are reluctant to advocate better mental help facilities within our jail as it would only attract more people in need of mental health services

We're recycling very dangerous criminals over and over again.

Any politician who wants to eliminate parole just doesn’t understand law enforcement.

I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released.

Let there be convenient cages for the committing of unruly vagrants in every ward.

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.

[We have to make] a distinction between dangerous violent criminals and people who are engaged in non-violent criminal activities….Your taking somebody out of the economy, breaking up their families, and putting them in a place with hardened criminals. I think that it is pretty hard to argue that has been a positive long-term result.

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.

There were no artists in Ossining, which was the home of Sing Sing prison. Most of the parents of the guys I knew were guards there.