Penal Code Quotes

Some of the people on death row today might not be there if the courts had not been so lenient on them when they were first offenders.

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

Americans like to humiliate wrongdoers...We like, in short, to punish. It makes us feel good. By every conceivable metric - arrests, prosecutions, duration of sentences, conditions of imprisonment - the United States is by far the most punitive rich democracy.

When the Constituent Assembly engaged men of letters to research the penal code in order to repeal the death penalty, even for the condemned, did they imagine that after four years of a revolution enlightened by philosophical ideals, the French would, without cease, kill their fellow citizens?

And where the offense is, let the great axe fall.

Somewhere within the concept of justice, the worst of the guilty must always be removed. I cannot divorce this, not completely. The people must have justice and so I want to reinstate and enshrine the blessed and holy guillotine!

If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It's better to live somehow than not at all.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it.

We have a legal system, and we have a penal code. We have the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, and people should respect this.

Whoever imposes severe punishment becomes repulsive to the people; while he who awards mild punishment becomes contemptible. But whoever imposes punishment as deserved becomes respectable. For punishment when awarded with due consideration, makes the people devoted to righteousness and to works productive of wealth and enjoyment; while punishment, when ill-awarded under the influence of greed and anger or owing to ignorance, excites fury even among hermits and ascetics dwelling in forests, not to speak of householders.

I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.

It is well-nigh obvious that those who are in favor of the death penalty have more affinities with murderers than those who oppose it.

You kill men for the wrongs they have done, not the wrongs that they may do someday.

No severity of punishment deters when detection is uncertain, as it always must be.

Criminals should be punished, not fed pastries.

Of course in 1789 to have killed three Protestants was counted a passport into heaven in the vicinity of Vinegar Hill [Ireland].

'419 scams,' named for a clause from the Nigerian penal code, are such a part of the white noise of the digital age that we no longer notice them.

Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of resistance.

Crime generally punishes itself.

There are eight kinds of punishment: fine, fetters, flogging, retaliation in kind, civil disgrace, banishment, slavery, death

If, as is contended by the advocates of “deterrence,” cruelty in punishment is justified by the “deterrent” effect which these persons credit it with, then surely the rack, the wheel, and the thumbscrew are the last word of penal wisdom. If hanging and the plank-bed are “deterrent” and hence justifiable, then … the stake and the rack are more “deterrent” and hence more justifiable.

The prison, above all others, should be the most human of institutions.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offense, that is.

Punishment closely follows guilt as its companion.