Michelle Lujan Grisham Quotes

We should be extremely cautious about continuing to increase sentences as a routine response to concerns over crime.

For the past seven years we have been cracking down on crime in Missouri, passing tougher laws for drug crimes and sex offenses and requiring prisoners to serve more time.

More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty.

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.

Obviously, people who commit crimes should be punished. Even people who steal socks and 'Snow White' videos should probably do time if they have priors, especially serious priors. But the punishment has to fit the crime, and the standard has to be the same for everyone.

It's not crime that makes us more punitive in the United States. It's the way we respond to crime and how we view those people who have been labeled criminals.

Every day, lax sentencing costs lives.

Even without mandatory sentences, judges are still capable of levying tough penalties for serious offenses - and just as in states like Texas that have 'tough on crime' reputations, this can be done without jeopardizing public safety.

Nothing will deter crime but the certainty of punishment.

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.

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

I'm not in favor of the death penalty. But I'm in favor of locking these people away in maximum security units where they can never get out. They can never escape. They can never be paroled. Lock the bad ones away. But you gotta rethink everybody else.

Any politician who wants to eliminate parole just doesn’t understand law enforcement.

What to do about these increases in crime? Plenty of laws already exist to punish violent criminals, and research questions the level of correlation between longer sentences and lower crime rates.

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

The majority of our criminals that we lock up are non-violent offenders.

Our laws are too lax, our justice system too weak - particularly when it comes to violent, dangerous offenders.

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.

I think we will be safer when we can concentrate law enforcement and criminal justice resources and energies on those individuals who truly need, for the safety of society... to be incarcerated.

The act of policing is, in order to punish less often, to punish more severely.

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.

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.

If we believe in our current penal process, then the penalties imposed by judges and juries should be the only sanctions for one's crime, not the invisible sanctions of the legislature.

All issues of crime are better addressed at the state level.