Mohamed Bouyeri Quotes

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

There is one stark fact facing us: three quarters of all crime that results in a caution or sentence happens because of reoffending. We must be fearless in dealing with this.

Offenders who commit crime in prison have a disruptive and often devastating impact on the prospects of those who are trying to turn their lives around and who see prison as a pivotal turning point in their lives.

I think of my brother just out of prison again. He will have spent ten years of the last 30 in prison.

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.

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

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

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.

Given the devastation that crime can visit on families and communities, I will err on being a little too tough on crime than being too soft on crime.

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.

Prison is a recruitment center for the army of crime. That is what it achieves.

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.

Incarceration is supposed to keep the community safe from your behavior.

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.

Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try - by punishing the troublesome - to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously.

You know what an effective deterrent to crime is? Jail! And do you know what kind of criminal penalty actually makes people think twice about committing crimes the next time? The kind that actually comes out of some individual's pocket, not fines that come out of the corporate kitty.

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

The second time I went to jail, I was like, 'Okay, this is not the move.'

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

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

First we pin the convict's badge on him: then we examine his case.

Incarceration begets more incarceration, and incarceration also begets more crime, which in turn invites more aggressive enforcement, which then re-supplies incarceration …

How come life in prison doesn't mean life? Until it does, we're not ready to do away with the death penalty. Stop thinking in terms of "punishment" for a minute and think in terms of safeguarding innocent people from incorrigible murderers. Americans have a right to go about their lives without worrying about these people being back out on the street. So until we can make sure they're off the street permanently, we have to grit our teeth and put up with the death penalty

A reform in the system of criminal jurisprudence, by which the death penalty shall no longer be inflicted; and by which, during that term, a portion of the prison employment shall be for, and the product thereof be faithfully paid over to, the support of the criminal’s family; and by which our so-called prisons shall be virtually transformed into vast reformatory workshops, from which the unfortunate may emerge to be useful members of society, instead of the alienated citizens they now are.