Edward Gibbon Quotes

Let me remember, when I find myself inclined to pity a criminal, that there is likewise a pity due to the country.

Criminal justice should not be a show for citizens.

In Scotland over many years we have cultivated through our justice system what I hope can be described as a 'culture of compassion.' On the other hand, there still exists in many parts of the U.S., if not nationally, an attitude towards the concept of justice which can only be described as a 'culture of vengeance.'

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.

To show men that crimes can be pardoned, and that punishment is not their inevitable consequence, encourages the illusion of impunity and induces the belief that, since there are pardons, those sentences which are not pardoned are violent acts of force rather than the products of justice.

The message has to be sent that if you commit a crime there has to be punishment.

Criminals are punished, that others may be deterred.

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.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

The Criminal Code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity that without an easy access to exceptions it in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear it a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.

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

Every punishment is based, not on logic or the feeling of justice, but on the desire to wish evil on those who have done evil to you or to another person…. Everything about our present system of punishments and about all criminal law will be thought of by future generations in the same way that we think of cannibalism or human sacrifice to the pagan gods. “How did they not see the uselessness and cruelty of those things which they did?” our descendants will say about us.

A judge who cannot punish, associates himself in the end with the criminal.

Humanity and good policy conspire to dictate, that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed. The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.

There must be real consequences for those who commit crimes in our neighborhoods.

The purpose of our justice system is to reflect the values of our society and to punish those who violate our standards.

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

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.

Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.

Wouldn't it be better to have a watertight law designed to catch the guilty, rather than a press release law designed to catch the headlines?

We don't want crimes committed in New Mexico falling through the cracks. This legislation ensures that there is no area of our state where crimes can be committed without consequence.

The liberation of those who commit murder and terrorism is unacceptable.

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

I do not think that condemning people who murder and killing them necessarily sends out the right message.

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