Jerry Brown Quotes

You will feel the full force of the law and if you are old enough to commit these crimes you are old enough to face the punishments. And to these people I would say this: you are not only wrecking the lives of others, you are potentially wrecking your own life too.

Crimes sometimes shock us too much; vices almost always too little.

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

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.

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.

Robbery is a crime; rape is a crime; murder is a crime; treason is a crime and crime must be punished. The law provides for it, and the courts are open. Treason must be made infamous and traitors must be impoverished.

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

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

Severity of punishment is not the cure for crime. Certainty and promptness of punishment rather than severity are more effective. There was a time, as we all know, when in England considerably more than two hundred separate offenses were punishable by death. Nevertheless, that period was one of the most lawless and violent known to history. The utter failure of the drastic technique in the suppression of crime is universally acknowledged.

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.

Gang members aren't frightened into acceptable behavior by increased penalties, enhanced punishments, and the promise of new detention facilities.

When you criminalize something, only criminals can deal with it. When criminals deal with it, there's no recourse to law, so there's only recourse to violence.

I think one of the keys to any crime-prevention program that's got to be developed is to focus on punishment - to let people know that there is a sanction and a punishment for hurting others.

Nothing will deter crime but the certainty of punishment.

I have prosecuted very serious criminals who are now serving very long jail sentences.

I think crime is probably driven more by morality than anything else.

Penalties serve to deter those who are not inclined to commit any crimes.

Crime, to the man of the forties, was an alien monstrous terror.

I was not sympathetic to the assumption that criminals had radically different motivations from everyone else.

You only have to worry about going to jail if you break the law. That's pretty simple.

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.

Crime is naught but misdirected energy.

There's a simple way to solve the crime problem: obey the law; punish those who do not.

To make crime unprofitable, let the government run it.