Jayson Williams Quotes

Bad people should be incarcerated.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I get a lot of calls from families and people who have served time and they say, 'Thank you, Sheriff. I hate the tents.' That's music to my ears.

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

I went to prison, I paid my bill.

Place all prisons near a high-road, where the suffering and disfigured offenders can be seen

Trying to solve the crime problem by building more prison cells is like trying to solve the problem of AIDS by building more hospitals.

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

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

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

The way to reform has always led through prison.

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.

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.

All of us have made mistakes in our lives, but only some of us have had to pay for the mistakes. [By going to jail.]

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

I spent five years of my youth in prison - some very bad prisons.