Criminal Justice Quotes

“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice. (Cambridge University Press (September 29, 1989)”
― Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

“A president cannot defend a nation if he is not held accountable to its laws.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“[T]here are some human rights that are so deep that we can't negotiate them away. I mean people do heinous, terrible things. But there are basic human rights I believe that every human being has. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the United Nations says it for me. And it says there are two basic rights that can't be negotiated that government doesn't give for good behavior and doesn't take away for bad behavior. And it's the right not to be tortured and not to be killed. Because the flip side of this is that then when you say OK we're gonna turn over -- they truly have done heinous things, so now we will turn over to the government now the right to take their life. It involves other people in doing essentially the same kind of act."

(PBS Frontline:Angel on Death Row)”
― Sister Helen Prejean

“There is one key area in which Zuma has made no attempt at reconciliation whatsoever: criminal justice and security. The ministers of justice, defence, intelligence (now called 'state security' in a throwback to both apartheid and the ANC's old Stalinist past), police and communications are all die-hard Zuma loyalists. Whatever their line functions, they will also play the role they have played so ably to date: keeping Zuma out of court—and making sure the state serves Zuma as it once did Mbeki.”
― Mark Gevisser

“Criminal justice" is what happens after a complicated series of events has gone bad. It is the end result of failure--the failure of a group of people that sometimes includes, but is never limited to, the accused person.”
― Paul Delano Butler, Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice

“Endangering human life for profit should be a universal crime.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Make a commitment to serve the needs of the ‘least of these’ and give voice to the voiceless.”
― Artika Tyner

“American citizens should not lose their constitutional rights because they lack the money to pay for them.”
― Bernard B. Kerik, From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054

“There is no greater threat to a free and democratic nation than a government that fails to protect its citizen’s freedom and liberty as aggressively as it pursues justice.”
― Bernard B. Kerik, From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054

“Providing adequate representation even for defendants who appear guilty is the best way to protect those who are not.”
― Deborah L Rhode

“No one should ever be wrongfully deprived of their rights to liberty and freedom without just cause, yet in the past 25 years alone thousands of people have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to tens of thousands of years in prison.”
― Bernard B. Kerik, From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054

“The offender must be able to give something back. But criminals are most often poor people. They have nothing to give. The answers to this are many. It is correct that our prisons are by and large filled with poor people. We let the poor pay with the only commodity that is close to being equally distributed in society: time.”
― Nils Christie, Limits to Pain: The Role of Punishment in Penal Policy

“Seven thousand of them were indicted and arraigned, and then they entered the maw of the criminal justice system—right here—through the gateway into Gibraltar, where the vans were lined up. That was about 150 new cases, 150 more pumping hearts and morose glares, every week that the courts and the Bronx County District Attorney's Office were open. And to what end? The same stupid, dismal, pathetic, horrifying crimes were committed day in and day out, all the same. What was accomplished by assistant D.A.'s, by any of them, through all this relentless stirring of the muck? The Bronx crumbled and decayed a little more, and a little more blood dried in the cracks. The Doubts! One thing was accomplished for sure. The system was fed, and those vans brought in the chow.”
― Tom Wolfe

“In a free and democratic society such as ours, justice should not eternally abrogate one’s rights to freedom and liberty, except in the most extreme cases.”
― Bernard B. Kerik, From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054

“Death Penalty' in rarest of rare cases, should adorn criminal justice system in India,which would operate as a detterent mechanism. Abrogation of capital punishment and it's obliteration from the law, would be a great folly. In the human rights perspective, concretising the human rights of the criminal(perpetrator of a particular offense attracting Capital punishment ) by negating Human Rights of the victim is again a murder of justice.”
― Henrietta Newton Martin

“Isn’t Santa just a stand in for the society that has locked them up for formative years? Something that watches and judges, telling them that they got what they deserved based on their behavior? Surely they have to have noticed that Saint Nick, like the judicial system itself, tends to look more favorably upon rich children. He is fat, white, past middle age, and holds all the cards.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, A Creature Was Stirring

“So he is my brother, and yours, too, Carl Schummel, for that matter," answered Peter, looking into Carl's eye. "We cannot say what we might have become under other circumstances.Wehave been bolstered up from evil since the hour we were born. A happy home and good parents might have made that man a fine fellow instead of what he is. God grant that the law may cure and not crush him!”
― Mary Mapes Dodge, Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates

“It is quick to over punish and uninterested in rewarding good behavior. What would we say about an individual who had these characteristics? Mean? Cruel? Heartless? Mindless? Hypocritical? Stupid?”
― Bernard B. Kerik, From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054

“Society that empowers teachers empowers peace. Society that empowers police empowers malice.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“I don't obey the law,
I write them.
I am the school where reformers,
And public servants learn the rudiments.

I am the university where scientists,
Shrinks 'n philosophers develop sapience.
I am the cosmic record that makes,
Monks and theologians grow sentience.

I am the end of all half-knowledge,
I am the beginning of sight beyond sight.
Whoever finds me in their heart's mirror,
Can never be tamed by apish fright.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“In the groundbreaking book 'The New Jim Crow' Michelle Alexander defines our prison system as a method of racially charged social control that creates 'a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society."...Honing in on how the War on Drugs has depleted the black community, Alexander notes that 'in at least fifteen states, blacks are admitted to prison on drug charges at a rate from twenty to fifty-seven times greater than that of white men.' However, in spite of needed policy reforms. Alexander ultimately concludes that 'all of the needed reforms have less to do with failed policies than a deeply flawed public consensus, one that is indifferent, at best, to the experience of poor people of color.' As a pastor, this haunted me. It lingered, and I kept thinking, If anyone should be leading the charge, demonstrating what a morally and ethically rooted public consensus consists of, it should be-it must be-the church! But as someone who has ministered in some of the cities most ravaged by mass incarceration (Atlanta, Chicago, and Oakland), I lamentably confess that we have failed to do this. Furthermore, I can attest that the church-broadly speaking-is still eerily silent, seven years later.”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

“While the drug war is undoubtedly a primary driver of our nation's incarceration explosion, it is inaccurate to depict it as the independent impetus of mass incarceration. The War on Drugs is only one of five pipelines currently funneling people into prison, jails, and detention centers nationwide. The other four carceral conduits are the crackdown on immigration offenses, decreased funding for mental health, private prisons and detention centers, and the school-to-prison pipeline.”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

“He takes us to a beautiful building where, in 1754, a man killed his own brother. The brothers' father resolved to build this palace as a school, as a way of keeping alive the memory of his murdered son. I say that surely the son who had committed the murder would also be remembered.

"It's not quite like that," says Samil. "In our culture, the criminal shares his guilt with everyone who allowed him to commit the crime. When a man is murdered, the person who sold him the weapon is also responsible before God. The only way in which the father could correct what he perceived as his own mistake was to transform the tragedy into something useful for others.”
― Paulo Coelho, Aleph

“All nations seem to have had supreme confidence in the deterrent power of threatened and inflicted pain. They have regarded punishment as the shortest road to reformation...nations have relied on confiscation and degradation, on maimings, whippings, brandings, and exposure to public ridicule and contempt...Curiously enough, the fact is that, no matter how severe the punishments were, the crimes increased.”
― Robert G Ingersoll

“Is it not true that the criminal is a natural product, and that society unconsciously produces these children of vice? Can we not safely take another step, and say that the criminal is a victim, as the diseased and deformed and insane are victims? We do not think of punishing a man because he is afflicted with disease--our desire is to find a cure. We send him, not to the penitentiary, but to the hospital, to an asylum...instead of punishing, we pity. If there are diseases of the mind...as there are diseases of the body...and if these deformities produce what we call vice, why should we punish the criminal, and pity those who are physically diseased?”
― Robert G Ingersoll

“The average man does not wish to employ an ex-convict, because the average man has no confidence in the reforming powers of the penitentiary. He believes that the convict who comes out is worse than the convict who went in.”
― Robert G Ingersoll

“Those who are the fiercest to destroy their fellow men for having committed crimes, are, for the most part, at heart, criminals themselves.”
― Robert G Ingersoll

“Some may be, and probably millions have been, reformed, through kindness, through gratitude--made better in the sunlight of charity. In the atmosphere of kindness the seeds of virtue burst into bud and flower. Cruelty, tyranny, brute force, do not and cannot by any possibility better the heart of man.”
― Robert G Ingersoll

“An absurd thing for the murderous state to plead for, but, as always, the massive violence of the state was “justice,” was “law and order,” and resistance to perpetual violence was an act of terror.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“By suing his former lawyer, Baez’s attorney, Joe Tacopina, said Harvey had waived attorney-client privilege, allowing Tacopina on Baez’s behalf to denounce Harvey as 'a vile fiend' and a 'rapist.”
― Ken Auletta, Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence