Norman Douglas Quotes

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.

The more laws the more offenders

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

What is crime among the multitude is only vice among the few.

The greater the number of laws and enactments, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

Those greatly err who think that penalties are established only to punish crime. I hold that this is the least of the fruits which accrue there from to the state. For the greatest and the chief is the appeasing of the wrath of God, especially if the crime is directly against the majesty of God … strike awe into some by the punishment of others, to preserve some from being infected by others, to diminish the number of evil-doers, to make secure the life of the well-disposed

The problem is that we have evil people who try to skirt the laws. And that's the problem.

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

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.

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket

The compulsions of the law seem to have been provided for those only who require compulsions

If we started prosecuting people for sin, we’d all be in jail.

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.

Abstractly considered, the hanging of the gamblers at Vicksburg was of little consequence. They constitute a portion of the population that is worse than useless in any community; and their death, if no pernicious example be set by it, is never a matter of reasonable regret with any one. If they were annually swept from the stage of existence by the plague or smallpox, honest men would perhaps be much profited by the operation.

The priest accustoms the child to the idea of law, to make it obey better what he calls the "divine law," and the lawyer prates of divine law, that the civil law may be the better obeyed.

The experience of being a prosecutor gives us a sort of proctologists view of our society.

The first instinct of the modern man is to get a law passed to forbid or prevent what, in his wisdom, he disapproves.

Once the state becomes the ultimate beneficiary of crime proceeds, how different is it, really, from being simply the most powerful gang in a battlefield of gangs?

The most malign of all these dangers today is disregard and disobedience of law. Crime is increasing. Confidence in rigid and speedy justice is decreasing. I am not prepared to believe that this indicates any decay in the moral fiber of the American people. I am not prepared to believe that it indicates an impotence of the Federal Government to enforce its laws.

I'd rather lock somebody up and throw away the key and put them in hard labor, the ultimate penalty that the law will allow, but I'm opposed to the death penalty

The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like law, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property.

By what authority do you try me?

Terror, salutary terror, is here in truth the order of the day; it represses all the efforts of the wicked ; it divests crime of all covering and tinsel!

Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.