Michael Bloomberg Quotes

Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.

I don't believe in killing people. I believe in locking you up for the rest of your life.

People believe in capital punishment to the extent that it seems to be fair, but if fairness is in question, they prefer life imprisonment…. The death penalty as a way of deterrence is just not turning out to be true.

I prefer a prison full of criminals than a graveyard full of innocent people.

Bad people should be incarcerated.

Every punishment is based, not on logic or the feeling of justice, but on the desire to wish evil on those who have done evil to you or to another person…. Everything about our present system of punishments and about all criminal law will be thought of by future generations in the same way that we think of cannibalism or human sacrifice to the pagan gods. “How did they not see the uselessness and cruelty of those things which they did?” our descendants will say about us.

The death penalty is becoming a way of life in this country.

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

If you seek violence, we will seek to put you in jail.

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

'Getting smart on crime' does not mean reducing sentences or punishments for crimes.

The message has to be sent that if you commit a crime there has to be punishment.

I'm not in favor of the death penalty. But I'm in favor of locking these people away in maximum security units where they can never get out. They can never escape. They can never be paroled. Lock the bad ones away. But you gotta rethink everybody else.

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

Criminals are punished, that others may be deterred.

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

Court rules do not cause crime.

The purpose of punishment is fulfilled, crime is repressed by penalties of just, not tormenting, severity, its repetition is prevented, and hope is given for the reformation of the criminal.

There are eight kinds of punishment: fine, fetters, flogging, retaliation in kind, civil disgrace, banishment, slavery, death

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

Of the three official objects of our prison system: vengeance, deterrence, and reformation of the criminal, only one is achieved; and that is the one which is nakedly abominable.

The death penalty does absolutely nothing to deter crime.

But passing by all other considerations, and contemplating merely the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them.

There is little evidence that the length of a sentence, as opposed to its certainty, has significant deterrent effects. If we cut sentences in half across the board, there is no reason to believe we’d see an appreciable rise in crime, and over time we would most likely see a large drop in the prison population.

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