David Gauke Quotes

Where ex-offenders are genuinely trying to turn a corner and live free from crime, it is vital we do all we can to support them.

Restoring a person's ability to achieve success when they leave the prison walls promotes public safety, builds our economy and, most importantly, is the right thing to do.

Society during the last hundred years has been alternately perplexed and encouraged respecting the two great questions: how shall the criminal and pauper be disposed of in order to reduce crime and reform the criminal on the one hand and, on the other, to diminish pauperism and restore the pauper to useful citizenship?

I am a firm believer that upon release, ex-offenders should be afforded a second chance to become productive citizens by providing rehabilitation and education that will help them join the workforce.

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

I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them…

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

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.

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.

We have to find greater employment for these people with records.

I would make the case that the vast majority of prisoners leave prison and go back into society. We share that society with them and what sort of people do we want them to be.

If you put a woman in prison for four years when she's young and make her pay her time in a horrible place and she wants to come out and work, and become a mother and be a contributor to society and pay taxes and you never give her that chance. There is something un-Canadian about that.

When you've paid your debt to society, you need to be reconnected and re-engaged in society.

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.

In January 2013, I told the people in the Justice Department after the re-election that I wanted to focus on reforming the federal criminal justice system. I made an announcement in August of that year in San Francisco, when we rolled out the Smart on Crime initiative.

So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners eventually give up crime.

Instead of putting someone in prison for being a hooligan, give him a choice. He may have beaten someone up and he's got eight years, but tell him you can do eight years inside or spend five years in the Army. Put him in the Parachute Regiment, they'd soon sort him out.

The subject of criminal rehabilitation was debated recently in City Hall. It's an appropriate place for this kind of discussion because the city has always employed so many ex-cons and future cons.

We need to incorporate that age-old concept of redemption into the work that we do in the criminal justice system in California.

But in my district I have heard from law enforcement officials and across the State of Florida about how much this JAG funding helps them fight crime, and to protect and serve the citizens within their jurisdiction.

We lose our right to be surprised that California has the highest recidivism rate in the country if we refuse to hire folks who have taken responsibility for their crimes and have done their time.

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

Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.

If everyone who committed a crime were not allowed to work, what kind of economy would we have.

It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them.