Mandatory Sentencing Quotes

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.

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

Giving a 10-year mandatory minimum for a second offense fist fight is not going to reduce the chance that someone will be stabbed 16 times when you are not funding any of the programs that are desperately needed to actually reduce juvenile crime.

You don't hear TV cops griping because they have to enforce some Draconian law that shouldn't be on the books in the first place, or lamenting vindictive excesses in sentencing. Hollywood, supposedly a frothing cauldron of liberalism, has always been conservative on crime.

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.

Drug dealers need to understand a simple fact. You shoot a cop and you're going to be severely punished—fast. And if I had my way, I'd say with your life.

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.

Manditory minimums were almost always excessive, and they made me feel unethical, even dirty.

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

Crimes against children are the most heinous crime. That, for me, would be a reason for capital punishment because children are innocent and need the guidance of an adult society.

The draconian spirit that seeks to enhance penalties and to lower the age at which juveniles will be tries as adults, is part of the 'whole cloth' of three strikes. Our failure to address the depair of our inner-city youth is only delayed by our over-confidence in a stance that is 'tougher than thou.'

Thugs who brutalize elderly people should be punished severely.

My nation wants the death penalty. That is the decision of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.

Mandatory prison terms is easy to say, but where are we going to put people?

There is a separation - a very clear separation - between the judiciary, the legal system, and the political system in this country, and that's why Labor has a problem with the issue of mandatory sentencing as a principle.

Prisons are hate factories, Pastor, and society wants more and more of them.

Three strikes' laws make no sense as policy. They are more about the politicians responding to the people's desire to see their fury at social dysfunction reflected in the law. Our sentences are way too long. We need to look at the war on drugs, which is to say we need to look and this is easier said than done. Once again, politically, not an easy lift at all. Nevertheless, our policy is self-defeating. We're not keeping people from using the substances. We're creating a huge black market, just like we did under prohibition, which attracts all kinds of criminal enterprise.

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

Why does the new crime bill have so many new ways of killing people?

I was possessing heroin in fairly large quantities in New York City during the years of the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws. Had I been busted, I would have faced mandatory life in prison. I don't think many white kids walked, either. I knew one who got 15 years for pot.

Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

Three strikes, you're out. I don't care if you hire Edward Bennett Williams to defend you; three strikes, you're still out. Baseball is an island of stability in an unstable world.

Theft of a firearm should be punished as a felony, plain and simple.

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.