John Ensign Quotes

It has to be about more than punishment. We need to rehabilitate people. We lock up far too many people in America today. We lock them up as if locking them up is gonna solve the problem. And locking them up does not solve the problem. Did locking me up make me better? No, it did not. It made my struggle harder.

Unfortunately, the elimination of incentives such as parole, good time credits and funding for college courses, means that fewer inmates participate in and excel in literacy, education, treatment and other development programs.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

The United States imprisons many non-violent offenders who could instead be required to pay fines, perform community service, and make restitution to their victims… Maintaining our vast network of prisons consumes resources that could be better spent on education and other crime prevention efforts... Rather than reforming offenders, prison too often degrades and dehumanizes prisoners, making the task of rehabilitation and reentry into society even more difficult.

The regime in too many prisons is one of idleness, and locking up someone from such a background in idleness virtually guarantees re-offending. Instead there needs to be a full day's work every weekday in either the workshops or the education department or preferably a mixture of both.

We must do better by offenders who are sent to prison to make them less likely to return.

We've been addicted to incarceration as a primary response for decades, whether or not it's a good use of resources, whether or not it's humane, whether or not it is effective at keeping us safe, rehabilitating or healing victims.

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.

Sixty per cent of people entering prison today are illiterate.

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.

I believe, and I may be wrong, the system sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate, but they don't do that in a lot of cases.

I'm intending to work on juvenile justice reform, sentencing reform, reentry, drug treatment, access to mental health care.

The notion that we should take away educational programs in prisons in order to be tough on crime makes no sense.

If we have to build more prisons, it means we have failed.

We spend $94,000 per prisoner [per year]. There is a tension between punishment and making people’s lives better and I don’t actually think that we have done the second part well. We put people in prison and expect them to come out

In the long run, a flexible sentencing procedure which works to rehabilitate offenders offers the best hope in the majority of cases in the Federal courts.

We can agree that keeping serious criminals in prison is an effective means of preserving public safety, but we must also recognize that the axiom of 'putting people in jail and throwing away the key' does not apply to all offenders universally and can actually be counterproductive.

What makes a lot of sense is that, while people are incarcerated, give them the tools they need to be able to have a productive, lucrative living when they leave so they can provide for their families and break that cycle of recidivism.

I want to see prison numbers come down. We need better custody that cuts reoffending and crime. And we need to ensure judges, magistrates and the public have full confidence in the other penalties available.

We'll get way further if we educate people and not lock them up.

Violent felons and people with mental health problems need to be rehabilitated.

Prison reform, peace, and a presidential pardon - just a portion of Kushner's portfolio.

The whole issue of corrections is something that came up a lot, no matter where we were. I think people would expect that would be a Milwaukee issue, but it's an issue across the state, and that ties to so many other things.

This is not rocket science. If you mentor and support people when they leave prison they're less likely to reoffend.

I actually worked with an organization called Drama Club that works with incarcerated teens and youth in a detention center and in Rikers Island, which a lot of people don't know that teens have been incarcerated in Rikers Island.