Anna Quindlen Quotes

As a newspaper reporter, I covered and was around a fair number of crime scenes involving juvenile delinquents, and few things bothered me more than listening to their parents. Crying, ranting, proclaiming how great their children were despite being kicked out of school or previous run-ins with the law.

I had gone to jail, but I wasn't gettin' locked up for drugs then. I was gettin' locked up for guns. My moms kept finding guns and stuff in my room and she was gettin' more scared.

People are very apt to shift the Blame off themselves, and lay it upon others, when perhaps they themselves are as much or more to blame. The popular Cry is against Merchants and Traders, as if they had ruined the Country; or against those who are or have been in the Government

It is less important to find solutions than scapegoats.

Letting someone else take the blame ... every politician does that if they can, every politician.

If I've done anything wrong, I believe it's his fault.

That’s like blaming the witch for the witch hunt.

In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on …. I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange jumpsuit. Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12 … and where is his father, and why don’t you know where he is?

It would be an outrage against civilization if he were sent to jail for an act which was the product of a diseased brain

It is not always easy to draw the line between a hero and a lunatic. Practically we dub him sane if he succeeds and the reverse if he fails. Seriously, what a mockery the whole prison system is. We must not only allow our convict population to be bred, but we must pamper and pet them, send them to prison to recruit their health, let them out at intervals to propagate their kind and commit the same crimes, then lock them up again, and continue the same weary round ad infinitum. The imitative instinct is no where more developed than in the tendency to crime. Hundreds of cases of juvenile depravity have been traced to the poisonous influence of penny novelties and sensational serials, bristling with deeds of burglary and blood

If someone has it inside them to commit an act, then that act would be committed anyway. It's very easy for someone to place the blame on something other than the person who committed the act. It's people looking for scapegoats, you know?

I have to say I'm all for public flogging. One type of criminal that a public humiliation might work particularly well with are the juvenile delinquents, a lot of whom consider it a badge of honor to be sent to juvenile detention.

I want to bear down on violent crime, in all its aspects from terrorism to sexual offences but definitely knife and gun crime, particularly as it affects young people.

I'd request politicians to stop diverting attention from the actual issues that affect the country. Please stop resorting to soft targets like singers and musicians as scapegoats.

I find it very frustrating how much passing the buck there is in the criminal justice system when it comes to taking responsibility for outcomes.

I wouldn't have voted to prosecute 13-year-olds as adults.

People who end up in our prisons tend to come from the most difficult backgrounds. They did not have the parental support as they grew up, as many of us enjoyed, and they struggle when they leave prison.

In some cities such as Washington, DC, that 75 percent of young black men can expect to serve time in prison.

And although I broke a lot of laws as a teenager, I straightened out immediately upon turning eighteen, when I realized the state had a legal right to execute me.

I did nothing. The Word did it all.

These are young people who made mistakes that aren't that different than the mistakes I made and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made, we have a tendency sometimes to almost take for granted or think it's normal that so many young people end up in our criminal justice system. It's not normal. ... What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things.

There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular one is Providence.

If the people would but analyze the human equation of a prison they might better account for the crimes that are visited upon them in cities, towns, and hamlets, ofttimes by men who graduated with an education and equipment for just that sort of retributive service from some penal institution.

Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the 'criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.

Many offenders are tracked for prison at early ages, labeled as criminals in their teen years, and then shuttled from their decrepit, underfunded inner city schools to brand-new, high-tech prisons.