Believe Victims Quotes & Sayings

After a victim has reported a crime to the police, many people believe that the decision whether or not to charge the suspect with a crime, and then prosecute the suspect, is the prerogative of the victim. News media often contribute to this misconception in stories about rape victims by reporting that a victim 'declined to press charges.' In fact, the criminal justice system gives victims no direct say in the matter. It's the police, for the most part, who decide whether a suspect should be arrested, and prosecutors who ultimately determine whether a conviction should be pursued. — Jon Krakauer

Children who are victimized through sexual abuse often begin to develop deeply held tenets that shape their sense of self: 'My worth is my sexuality. I'm dirty and shameful. I have no right to my own physical boundaries.' That shapes their ideas about the world around them: 'No one will believe me. Telling the truth results in bad consequences. People can't be trusted.' It doesn't take long for children to being to act in accordance with these belief systems.
For girls who have experienced incest, sexual abuse, or rape, the boundaries between love, sex, and pain become blurred. Secrets are normal, and shame is a constant. — Rachel Lloyd

On a collective level, the mind-set "We are right and they are wrong" is particularly deeply entrenched in those parts of the world where conflict between two nations, races, tribes, religions, or ideologies is long-standing, extreme, and endemic. Both sides of the conflict are equally identified with their own perspective, their own "story," that is to say, identified with thought. Both are equally incapable of seeing that another perspective, another story, may exist and also be valid. Israeli writer Y. Halevi speaks of the possibility of "accommodating a competing narrative,"3 but in many parts of the world, people are not yet able or willing to do that. Both sides believe themselves to be in possession of the truth. Both regard themselves as victims and the "other" as evil, and because they have conceptualized and thereby dehumanized the other as the enemy, they can kill and inflict all kinds of violence on the other, even on children, without feeling their humanity and suffering. — Eckhart Tolle

Are Child Molesters Really Just Victims Themselves?
"All victims are offenders," one professional challenged me at a conference, "and all offenders are victims. How does your work address that?"
My work doesn't address that because I don't believe there's any evidence for that assertion. Obviously, not all victims are offenders, but it is also likely that most offenders weren't victims. The studies that find a high proportion of child molesters who were victims of child sexual abuse themselves are almost always based on self-report, and even there, study results differ dramatically. Studies show the number of child molesters who were themselves molested as children ranges from 22 percent in some studies to 82 percent in others.[101] — Anna C. Salter

A lot of people feel like they're victims in life, and they'll often point to past events, perhaps growing up with an abusive parent or in a dysfunctional family. Most psychologists believe that about 85 percent of families are dysfunctional, so all of a sudden you're not so unique. My parents were alcoholics. My dad abused me. My mother divorced him when I was six ... I mean, that's almost everybody's story in some form or not. The real question is, what are you going to do now? What do you choose now? Because you can either keep focusing on that, or you can focus on what you want. And when people start focusing on what they want, what they don't want falls away, and what they want expands, and the other part disappears. (Jack Canfield) — Rhonda Byrne

No one is interested in real victims, or real criminals. Not local courts, not their fellow citizens, not publishers, and not readers. Everyone simply refuses to believe them. An imaginary crime is much more convincing; reality is too real. They can only identify with an invented crime, only paper evil can excite them. — Dubravka Ugresic

When it is established that government by right can take wealth from some and give it to others. When a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men will use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they have passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. — Ayn Rand

To a Christian, the dastardly liberals are not so much villains as victims. It's not their fault they're possessed by demons. But if I felt a slight diminishing of hostility, I also saw any hope of mutual accommodation go up in a blast of sulfurous smoke...these days, much of what liberals really anguish about behind closed doors is how to find common ground with people of faith. And now I realized that for at least some people, common ground will never be possible because they don't object to specific ideas that can be reframed or adjusted. They object to Satan, whose bidding we are doing. They may not hate us - they may believe they love us - but they hate him, and they won't negotiate with him either. We want to persuade them, reason with them, listen to them, and accommodate them. They want to save us. It's not even the same playing field. — Daniel Radosh

There is a lovely feature of the American psyche which rejects the notion that there are victims. In America, attitude is a magical elixir that cures everything. People are supposed to believe that they create their realities, and are solely responsible for every aspect of their lives. Everything is because of a choice you made somewhere. Somehow, you were supposed to not only be equipped to make the right choice at all times, despite your circumstances, but to know exactly what the outcome of every choice you made would be. This is all very convenient for the people at the top of our economic system with all the money and the power. Keeps the rest of us trying. — Carl-John X. Veraja

History has shown that the greater power of the gun is its power to deter. Bear in mind that criminals, by definition, target only victims they believe they can overpower. When the intended victim draws a gun, the predator realizes that their erstwhile target has the ability to kill them instantly. This tends to modify their behavior immediately without a shot being fired. — Massad Ayoob

In economic terms, global warming is not merely an externality that we have failed to price in. The free market can only get us so far. This makes it a truly wicked problem, but it also gives us a more perfect moral clarity. We are not simply borrowing against our own future. For the most part, we are not our own victims. To rely on empathy to shape our response to climate change is often considered naive - the victims of warming are distant in space, distant in time, and the bullets are invisible - but I believe it is more naive to hope that we in the north will significantly cut emissions or consumption or give needed adaptation funding to distant countries because we personally feel threatened. In — McKenzie Funk

Abuse is always wrong. Some try to excuse it. Most perpetrators have a sense of entitlement, thinking their actions are justified. Ironically, their victims may also believe they deserve to be mistreated. Some will even defend their abuser, citing his or her earnest apologies afterward. But abuse in any form, for any reason, wounds both spouses. It's always sinful, and few things destroy trust in a marriage as quickly. Regardless of childhood pain or marital conflict, mature spouses learn to set limits so anger doesn't become abuse by frequency, degree, or duration. — Rob Jackson

Women, who are the prime victims of religion, and perhaps in some, stockholm syndrome effect, often form the most fervent advocates of the very thing that degrades them. I believe that in the end, it will be women who will turn this around. This should be the final stage of feminism. For a feminist to still believe in god is like a freed slave still living on the plantation. — Matthew Chapman

How seriously would we take person who said, "I have faith in Adolf Hitler, or in John Dilinger. I can't explain why they did the things they did, but I can't believe they would have done them without a good reason." Yet people try to justify the deaths and tragedies God inflicts on innocent victims with almost these same words.
Furthermore, my religious commitment to the supreme value of an individual life makes it hard for me to accept an answer that is not scandalized by an innocent person's pain, that condones human pain because it supposedly contributes to an overall work of esthetic value. If a human artist or employer made children suffer so that something immensely impressive or valuable could come to pass, we would put him in prison. Why then should we excuse God for causing such undeserved pain, no matter how wonderful the ultimate result may be? — Harold S. Kushner

I believe also that often the Evil One works through second causes. And I know that he can impel his victims to do evil in such a way that the blame falls on a righteous man, and the Evil One rejoices then as the righteous man is burned in the place of his succubus. — Umberto Eco

Humanity faces vast environmental challenges in the coming years; yet to suggest that they are unconquerable would be to place too little faith in the ability of people, both as individuals and as groups, to understand the world and respond to it effectively. Great change is coming; I hope and believe that people can take the initiative to enact change on a global scale, rather than becoming the victims of global change. — Bill Tomlinson

As long as we as a society continue to belittle and dismiss women's accounts, disbelieve and question their stories, and blame them for their own assaults, we are playing right into the hands of those who silence victims by asking: "who would believe you anyways?". — Laura Bates

Recently, results of the Human Genome Project have shattered one of Science's fundamental core beliefs, the concept of genetic determinism. We have been led to believe that our genes determine the character of our lives, yet new research surprisingly reveals that it is the character of our lives that controls our genes. Rather than being victims of our heredity, we are actually masters of our genome. — Bruce H. Lipton

Throughout our times with Christopher [therapist] we were encouraged to work together at communicating on the inside. He pointed out that it would be good for us all to listen-in when an alter was telling his/her story - that it's now safe, no harm will come to us from telling or from knowing. There was once a time when it was very important that we didn't know what had happened; that knowing meant danger or being so overwhelmed with pain and grief that we wouldn't survive. But now it was different. We're safe and strong, and our goal now are to uncover the grisly truth of what's happened to us, so that it's no longer a powerful secret. We can look at it and face the past for what it is - old memories of old events. Today is now,and we can choose to live a different way and believe different things. We were once powerless and vulnerable, but now we were in a position to make choices. We had control over our life. — Carolyn Bramhall

~Remember this always:
Your body and mind can be broken, but your Spirit, is unbreakable, and unchangeable~


When we talk about people or circumstances breaking our spirit, what we mean is that a person has been affected emotionally to the point of feeling broken; however, NOTHING in this world has the capacity to break or change our Spirit!
Our Spirit is what gives us the ability to overcome the misery and suffering experienced by our body and mind.

Our spirit is what drives prisoners of war come out unbroken; our spirit is what drives the victims of rape and abuse to overcome the emotional burdens of their mind.
Believe this! NOTHING can break or change your Spirit, because your spirit is above all things! — Martin Suarez

They maintain he wrote The Art of War. Personally, I believe it was a woman. On the surface, The Art of War is a manual about tactics on the battlefield, but at its deepest level it describes how to win conflicts. Or to be more precise, the art of getting what you want at the lowest possible price. The winner of a war is not necessarily the victor. Many have won the crown, but lost so much of their army that they can only rule on their ostensibly defeated enemies' terms. With regard to power, women don't have the vanity men have. They don't need to make power visible, they only want the power to give them the other things they want. Security. Food. Enjoyment. Revenge. Peace. They are rational, power-seeking planners, who think beyond the battle, beyond the victory celebrations. And because they have an inborn capacity to see weakness in their victims, they know instinctively when and how to strike. And when to stop. You can't learn that, Spiuni. — Jo Nesbo

Victim Mentality. Some choose to believe that there is nothing they can do to solve their problems, even when they in fact could. Victims seek to blame others for their problems or blame outside circumstances. This — Mark Manson

Most of us are still in some small way victims of the Industrial Revolution. Whether through our grandparents, our parents, or our own experience, we were raised to believe that our place in life required compliance and conformity rather than creativity and uniqueness. We have been raised in a world where information is deemed far more important than imagination. Adults replaced dreams with discipline when they were finally ready to grow up and be responsible for their lives. Whether this contrast was reinforced on an assembly line, in a cubicle, or in a classroom, the surest path to acceptance in society is accepting standardization. And we more than willingly, relinquish our uniqueness. — Erwin Raphael McManus

While it is easy to get caught up in the beliefs and attitudes of others, it is easier still to make one's self a victim of circumstance. Victims of circumstance believe they have no power over their lives, since they are merely the play-things of fate. Since they believe this, it is therefore so. — Stephen Richards

Nothing makes us believe more than fear, the certainty of being threatened. When we feel like victims, all our actions and beliefs are legitimized, however questionable they may be. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I believe in my heart that the music community will come together as one and rally to the aid of thousands of innocent victims, ... There is a tremendous need for relief dollars right now and through this effort each one of us can play an immediate role in helping comfort so many people. — Michael Jackson

In the long term, "I Believe You, Anita" became a feminist slogan, and Hill is often credited with launching a revolution in recognition of and response to workplace sexual harassment. A month after the hearings, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1991, part of which allowed sexual-harassment victims to sue their employers for damages and backpay. — Rebecca Solnit

I fully support your efforts to stamp out sexual assault in the United States military and believer that there is nothing in (Military Justice Improvement Act) that is inconsistent with the responsibility or authority of command. Your efforts in this regard have much broader implications that will actually strengthen the 'good order and discipline' of our military, which I believe accounts for much of the resistance that S967 is receiving ... Protecting the victims of these abuses and restoring American values to our military culture is long overdue. — Dave McGinnis

It's an old illness you suffer from, Mr. Smiley," she continued, taking a cigarette from the box; "and I have seen many victims of it. The mind becomes separated from the body; it thinks without reality, rules a paper kingdom and devises without emotion the ruin of its paper victims. But sometimes the division between your world and ours is incomplete; the files grow heads and arms and legs, and that's a terrible moment, isn't it? The names have families as well as records, and human motives to explain the sad little dossiers and their make-believe sins. When that happens I am sorry for you. — John Le Carre

When we depress, we believe we are the victims of a feeling over which we have no control. — William Glasser

No one is ever a victim, although your conquerors would have you believe in your own victimhood. How else could theu conquer you? — Barbara Marciniak

Many people's circumstances dictate their stances. They become powerless victims of other people's actions and attitudes. They wrongly believe that their physical situation is their condition. The truth is, you do not always have power over what happens to you, but you do have complete control over what happens in you. — Kris Vallotton

I believe that the victims and their families should start lodging civil actions for negligence against the politicians. Allowing treasonous murderers into our countries, at the tragic cost to our citizens is worthy of a court action. And as soon as the first judgment goes in favour of the plaintiff, that will change the immigration policies overnight, because, as we know, money is the only thing that talks. — Robert Black

Certainly the Ripper liked to believe he was actually doing the world a favor by ridding it of "vermin," as he put it. In his mind, his victims were "whores" who got what they deserved. — Patricia Cornwell

Chief Johnson has full faith on us. Which means if I can complete this task and hunt down the murderer, not only does the chief won't feel any uncertainty on Anthony and I, but the spirits of the victims can move on. It sounds silly to believe that the undead is still around, but it is the truth. And since I have a good heart, I must use it. — Simi Sunny

To listen to the nation's psychiatric gurus is to come to believe that crimes are caused, not committed. Perpetrators don't do the crime, but are driven to their dirty deeds by a confluence of uncontrollable factors, victims of societal forces or organic brain disease. — Ilana Mercer

I believe I love my victims. Something about each and every one of them calls to me, draws me in and makes me fall in love. I just happen to destroy the things that I love. — Jaden Wilkes

Loss of self-esteem Beverly Engel, in The Emotionally Abused Woman (1990), describes the effect of emotional abuse on self-esteem: Emotional abuse cuts to the very core of a person, creating scars that may be longer-lasting than physical ones. With emotional abuse, the insults, insinuations, criticism, and accusations slowly eat away at the victim's self-esteem until she is incapable of judging the situation realistically. She has become so beaten down emotionally that she blames herself for the abuse. Emotional abuse victims can become so convinced that they are worthless that they believe that no one else could want them. They stay in abusive situations because they believe they have nowhere else to go. Their ultimate fear is being all alone. — Paul Mason

Obama just announced Americans don't consider themselves victims, or entitled. Actually, the vast majority of Obama supporters believe exactly that. They believe exactly that. — Rush Limbaugh

I believe the best service to the child is the service closest to the child, and children who are victims of neglect, abuse, or abandonment must not also be victims of bureaucracy. They deserve our devoted attention, not our divided attention. — Kenny Guinn

Hence we are the victims of an illusion which leads us to believe we have ourselves produced what has been imposed upon us externally. — Emile Durkheim

Parents need to realize that the world is getting complicated every second. With new problems, new diseases, new habits. They have to realize the vast probability of their kids being victims of this age, this complicated era. Your kids could be exposed to problems that no kind of therapy can help. Your kids could be brainwashed by themselves to believe in insane theories that drive them crazy. Most kids will go through this stage. The lucky ones will understand. They will grow out of them. The most unlucky ones will live in these problems. Grow in them and never move forward. They will cut themselves, overdose on drugs, take up excessive drinking and smoking, for the slightest problems in their lives.
You can't blame these kids for not being thankful or satisfied with what they have. Their mentality eludes them from the reality. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

I used to want to be a cop for a brief time, a detective, solving crimes and upholding the law, ever since I stated watching crime shows in junior high. But being a cop, contrary to what many believe, isn't like the films or television shows that we see every day. If you're the cop who has to have the grim duty of telling a parent that their child was killed, or who loses their friend on a dangerous case, or who has to interview victims of horrible crimes, somehow I imagine that you just want to quit forever on some days. — Rebecca McNutt

Antidepressants are the biggest fraud in the world. Number one, Prozac gives you a royal soft-on like you wouldn't believe, and number two you never know all the side effects. I look at the pharmaceutical companies as the drug barons, the psychopharmcologists as the mules and the patients as the victims. They're innocent because they think they're being cured. — Robert Evans

The only appropriate war rhetoric is more rhetoric that calls our enemies spirits and people with flesh the victims of this war. Satan wants us to fight with one another, and I understand that some evil must be restrained, but our war, the war of the ones who believe in Jesus, is a war unseen. If we could muster a portion of the patriotism we feel toward our earthly nations into patriotism and bravery in concert with the kingdom of God, the enemy would take fewer casualties. — Donald Miller

Want to control a people? Teach them to think of themselves as victims. Tell them they have an enemy, and that enemy is responsible for all their woes. It doesn't have to be a real enemy; it doesn't even have to make sense. Just tell it to them often enough, and they will come to believe it. Once they do, you can rob them of their money, time, and freedom, so long as you keep their eyes fixed on the 'enemy' you have created for them. — Aaron Lee Yeager

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. — Mitt Romney

People who believe in a divine creator, trying to live their lives in obedience to his supposed wishes and in expectation of a supposed eternal reward, are victims of the greatest confidence trick of all time. — Barbara Smoker

Many Nigerians believe that Babangida 'institutionalized corruption', yet few admit their own complicity in creating the situation where corruption became the norm. The citizenry are simultaneously victims, accomplices and active participants in their own corrupt downfall. Corruption in Nigeria is not just an offshoot of collapsed social and governmental institutions, nor is it the result of a hostile economic environment. The roots go much deeper and are more symptomatic of a residual breakdown of Nigerian societal values and morality. It is the result of a nationwide refusal to condemn dishonesty... While the government must take blame for not cracking down on corruption, the public deserves its share of blame for encouraging it, and letting the government get away with it. — Max Siollun

There is a family of us who have this yearning for a kind of excellence that we can manifest every day of our lives, a family who wants to believe we're not pawns, we're not victims on this planet, that knows we have the power within us here and now to change the world we see around us! — Richard Bach

We Muslims believe that the white race, which is guilty of having oppressed and exploited and enslaved our people here in America, should and will be the victims of God's divine wrath. — Malcolm X

We're not children, neither of us. We don't believe in fairy tales. And if we did, who would we be? Not Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty. I slice murder victims' heads off and Anna stretches skin until it rips, she snaps bones like green branches into smaller and smaller pieces. We'd be the fricking dragon and the wicked fairy. I know that. But I still have to tell her. — Kendare Blake

It has always seemed to me that the social order was implicit in the very nature of things, and required nothing more from the human spirit than care in arranging the various elements; that a people could be governed without being made thralls or libertines or victims thereby; that man was born for peace and liberty, and became miserable and cruel only through the action of insidious and oppressive laws. And I believe therefore that if man be given laws which harmonize with the dictates of nature and of his heart he will cease to be unhappy and corrupt. — Louis Antoine De Saint-Just

She believed, and was entitled to believe, I must say, that all human beings were evil by nature, whether tormentors or victims, or idle standers-by. They could only create meaningless tragedies, she said, since they weren't nearly intelligent enough to accomplish all the good they were meant to do. — Kurt Vonnegut

The victims I've worked with taught me that individuals want to believe they are entitled to justice. My community taught me that when the choice is clear-cut enough, so do entire counties.

We have become profoundly discouraged about whether we have such choices. My own experience is that we do, if we are willing to pay the price. We need better data to make decisions based on performance, but getting that data is a matter of passing the right laws requiring crunchable statistics and mandatory public reports. The rest is on us. If Tip O'Neil was right, if all politics is local, then our local district attorneys are the place to start. Crime is local. What we do about it is as close as the nearest voting booth. — Alice Vachss

The East Timorese government does not believe that we should consider compensation for the victims because there are tens of thousands of people who were, in one way or another, affected by the violence either directly or indirectly. — Jose Ramos-Horta

You've told me repeatedly now that you find me blindingly attractive." "That doesn't mean I like you. Besides, your brand of pretty is like a weapon. You reel victims in with it, just like a vampire does. I wouldn't be surprised if you sparkle in the sun." "I cannot believe I'm arguing with a woman who references Twilight." "The fact that you know I'm referencing Twilight betrays you as a secret Edward-loving fanboy." His snort is loud and scathing. "Team Jacob all the way." I can't help it, my eyes fly open, and I lift a corner of my mask to glare at him. "That's it. We can never be friends. — Kristen Callihan

We all like to think that if we were the victims of domestic abuse we'd up and leave - but it's not always as easy or straightforward as that. Women stay with abusive partners for all kinds of reasons - they love them, they fear them, they have children with them, they believe they can change them or they simply have no where else to go. — Kate Thornton

When we succumb to believing that we are victims of our circumstances and yield to the plight of determinism, we lose hope, we lose drive, and we settle into resignation and stagnation. — Stephen Covey

If your talking about the Summerdale house and the bodies found there, we feel that some of them died of drug overdose, then buried alive. Trouble is the state never did toxicology on the victims, as they wouldn't fit with their theory that they were all strangled. Even Dr. Stein say that the 13 died of suffocation and 10 were left undetermined, which leads me to believe that there's ... that they were not killed the way the state wants you to believe. — John Wayne Gacy

They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God's power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archtype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. It is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate - confusion between him who worships and that which is worshipped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man. — Philip K. Dick

And he thought about the Devil, in whom he did not believe, and he looked around at the two windows where the fires were gleaming. It seemed to him that out of those crimson eyes the Devil himself was looking at him--that unknown force that had created the mutual relation of the strong and the weak, that coarse blunder which one could never correct. That strong must hinder the weak from living--such was the law of Nature; but only in a newspaper article or in a schoolbook was that intelligible and easily accepted. In the hotchpotch which was everyday life, in the tangle of trivialities out of which human relations were woven, it was no longer a law, but a logical absurdity, when the strong and the weak were both equally victims of their mutual relations, unwillingly submitting to some directing force, unknown, standing outside life, apart from man. — Anton Chekhov

POVERTY, n. A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform. Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a prosperity where they believe these to be unknown. — Ambrose Bierce

The rationale seems to be that we keep people as victims by validating them, empathizing with them, and fighting alongside them for equality and the dignity they deserve. I don't think people are kept down by that. I believe what keeps people down is the constant dismissal of their pain, the degradation, the humiliation, the fear of injustice, and the continuous crushing of their will, their faith, and their hope. This type of oppression kills the self-esteem people need to empower themselves, and it's flat-out terrorism. — Kyrian Lyndon

As I believe I have said, everyone in prison is an innocent man. Oh, they read the scripture the way those holy rollers on TV read the Book of Revelations. They were the victims of judges with hearts of stone and balls to match, or incompetent lawyers, or police frame-ups, or bad luck. They read the scripture, but you can see a different scripture in their faces. Most cons are a low sort, no good to themselves or anyone else, and their worst luck was that their mothers carried them to term. — Stephen King

When a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims, then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter. — Ayn Rand

Neil once told me you had to become a monster so that you didn't become the victim of one instead. I don't care what anyone says. I believe him. — Shirley Marr

I knew from combat that casualties are the victims of a process, not of anger nor of hate or cruelty. And I believe that in the moment of acceptance, between winner and loser, between killer and killed, there is love. — John Steinbeck

Victims of violent crime are not always believed ...
[referring to victim testimony at serial killer and pedophile Marc Detroux's trial] — Natascha Kampusch

I don't believe in devils. Indifference and misunderstandings can create evil situations. Most of the time, people who appear to be evil are really victims of evil deeds. — Max Von Sydow

People do not emphasize with victims and give them limitless sympathy, but can very quickly switch to aggression and rejection — Natascha Kampusch

Now, on the subject of deterrence, I admit that there can be little doubt that as presently administered in the United States, the death penalty is not a general deterrent to murder in many, if not most, situations. . . .

But of one thing I am certain: it is, by God, a specific deterrent. No one who has been executed has ever taken another innocent life. And until such time as we really mean it as a society when we say 'imprisonment for life,' I, and the families of countless victims, would sleep better at night knowing there is no chance that the worst of these killers will ever again be able to prey on others. Even then, I personally believe that if you choose to take another human life, you ought to be prepared to pay with your own. — John E. Douglas