Matt Bevin Quotes

As a law-enforcement official, as a politician, you are always going to have in the back of your mind the fear that someone you release will end up committing another crime, potentially a serious crime, during a period when they otherwise would have been incarcerated.

And some people, you've got to lock up. If you don't, they're going to hurt you.

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

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.

Every first year law student learns that sentencing has four goals: retribution, incapicitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation.

It is a huge asset to law and order that serious or persistent criminals should be taken out of the society on which they prey. It makes life safer for the law-abiding and on the whole prisons are pretty good at containing those who have been committed to them.

Nothing will deter crime but the certainty of punishment.

We've got to clear some of the room out of the prisons so we can put the bad guys in there, like the pedophiles and the politicians.

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

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.

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

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

We make no apology for people who should be in prison being in prison.

I've always been tremendously interested in criminal law. It goes to a deep interest I have in prisons and the criminal element, and what we do as a society with it. I've always been touched by the idea of criminality.

A far greater factor than abolishing poverty is the deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and - at some point - finality of judgment.

I strongly believe that for serious and violent criminals, we must absolutely hold them accountable for their crimes and send them to prison.

More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty.

Criminals are punished, that others may be deterred.

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

The real answer to the problem of crime committed by persons on bail, and indeed the solution to the general problem of crime, lies not in preventive detention of individuals presumed innocent, but in the speedy trial of the accused and the swift and sure punishment of the guilty.

No penal or political system which multiplies the population of the prisons at the rate of 10 per cent every year will solve a problem which is growing to be more and more of a danger to the social and moral life of the nation.

The fact is that our administration of the criminal law has as nearly reached perfection in guarding the innocent (and guilty) from conviction as is possible for any human institution; but in securing the safety and order of the community by the conviction of the guilty it is woefully inadequate.

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

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.

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.