David Gauke Quotes

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.

I think that far too often we let those who commit crimes in our society off far too lightly.

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.

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

The purpose of punishment is fulfilled, crime is repressed by penalties of just, not tormenting, severity, its repetition is prevented, and hope is given for the reformation of the criminal.

Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment.

Arresting people is not going to lower the crime rate

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.

Given the devastation that crime can visit on families and communities, I will err on being a little too tough on crime than being too soft on crime.

It is a huge asset to law and order that serious or persistent criminals should be taken out of the society on which they prey. It makes life safer for the law-abiding and on the whole prisons are pretty good at containing those who have been committed to them.

Prison is a recruitment center for the army of crime. That is what it achieves.

Unfortunately, if the man who leaves the prison gates is just as likely or - as is sometimes grievously the case - more likely to offend as he was when he entered them, then we fail not only the individual but public safety as well.

Too often, we see violent criminals return to the streets they have previously terrorized, only to commit more violent crimes.

The typical prisoner has numerous brushes with the law before finally being sent behind bars. Each year thousands of cautions are issued to people who will come back to crime again.

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.

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.

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

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

Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.

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

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

Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.

If I’m ever released, I do the same again. Exactly the same.