Thomas Mellon Quotes

A proper criminal justice system exacts justice - that is, punishes criminals for their crimes. Rehabilitation and deterrence are worthy goals, but they are secondary to retribution.

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

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

The world is a penal institution.

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

The law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.

Prison works.

Our justice system is a punitive one that's there to sort of deal with what happens after someone's already offended.

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

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.

I was gladly cuffed, shackled, loaded into the caged bus and driven through the main gate of Bare Hill Correctional Facility for what I pray to God will be forever.

To show men that crimes can be pardoned, and that punishment is not their inevitable consequence, encourages the illusion of impunity and induces the belief that, since there are pardons, those sentences which are not pardoned are violent acts of force rather than the products of justice.

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

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

I should still be in jail.

Now, I - for several years while I was researching this book, I felt quite obsessed by thoughts about sentencing, punishment, how judges arrive at their decisions.

It is the crime not the scaffold which is the disgrace.

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

I sent people to the penitentiary as fast as I could, never thinking about whether they deserved it.

Criminals are punished, that others may be deterred.

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

Criminal justice should not be a show for citizens.

Within the realm of the law, we have to be as severe as we can. We will not simply give capital punishment to all criminals, but those who deserve it will get it.

Bad people should be incarcerated.