Reoffending Quotes

A duty to the public must be to stop prisoners reoffending through successful rehabilitation.

Employment is key to reducing recidivism.

The best protection against recidivism is a job.

My father was jailed off and on for seven years.

Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

Rapists who might've been convicted were free to assault other women.

When I was a kid, I got caught shoplifting by a store security guard in Ellensburg. The next time I saw that store guard was when I got thrown in jail again - this time for not paying court fees. The guy happened to be in jail, too, right next to me. That's what Eastern Washington is like - you never get too far away from anybody.

Once I've done a crime, I just forget it. I go from crime to crime.

I want to see prison numbers come down. We need better custody that cuts reoffending and crime. And we need to ensure judges, magistrates and the public have full confidence in the other penalties available.

What has too often happened in the past is that people have threatened punishment but have failed to carry it out. It's imperative in any initiative that is undertaken that punishment be real and that there be truth in sentencing, and that the truly dangerous offenders - the recidivists and the career criminals - be put away and kept away.

The prison system today is so messed up. Some people say, "Some criminals are made in prison," and it's actually true. The numbers and the facts are very clear. Almost 70% re-offend, and they re-offend, more often than not, with a worse crime than what they were put away for. And what's mind-boggling is that it's not in anyone's interests. It's a waste of enormous resources, with money, but also all of these young men and women that have their lives ruined.

I've ended up in prison a number of times, once in Cambodia, once in Cuba - for hours rather than days.

...a common observation, that few are mended by imprisonment, and that he, whose crimes have made confinement necessary, seldom makes any other use of his enlargement, than to do, with greater cunning, what he did before with less.

If I’m ever released, I do the same again. Exactly the same.

There is one stark fact facing us: three quarters of all crime that results in a caution or sentence happens because of reoffending. We must be fearless in dealing with this.

I think of my brother just out of prison again. He will have spent ten years of the last 30 in prison.

The typical prisoner has numerous brushes with the law before finally being sent behind bars. Each year thousands of cautions are issued to people who will come back to crime again.

What does this system seem designed to do? As I see it, it seems designed to send people right back to prison, which is what happens about 70% of the time.

I think most people have a general sense that when you're released from prison, life is hard, but, you know, if you work hard and apply self-discipline and stay out of trouble, you can make it. But that's true only for a relative few.

Our research shows that nearly 60% of recent offenders who engaged with a community-based alcohol programme did not go on to reoffend in the two years following treatment. Offenders given a community sentence including mental health treatment have also shown to be significantly less likely to reoffend.

People coming out of jail need a path back into society: access to a job, a place to live, supportive services. We've seen what happens without it: they commit more crimes and return to jail, which is worse for everyone.

You might have two years probation and do good for a whole year, and you make one mistake, and you got to start over.

About 70% of those released from prison return within a few years, and the majority of those who return in some states do so in a matter of months because the challenges associated with mere survival on the outside are so immense.

This is not rocket science. If you mentor and support people when they leave prison they're less likely to reoffend.

We must do better by offenders who are sent to prison to make them less likely to return.