Crime And Punishment Society Quotes & Sayings

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. — Clint Eastwood

I write that crime is an unlawful act of violence that can be committed by anyone, and that punishment is the consequence designed for criminals who don't have the economic means to cover it up. Throughout history, men of wealth and power have been exempt from facing the consequences of their evil deeds. Crime, therefore, can be defined as an offense committed by an individual of inferior status in society. Punishment is a consequence forced on the perpetrator of the crime only if he occupies one of the lower steps of the social ladder — Mahbod Seraji

Punishment is but legalized crime. In a society built on prevention, rather than retaliation, there would be very little crime. The few exceptions will be treated medically, as of unsound mind and body. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Tattoos tell stories of crime and passion, punishment and regret. They express an outlaw, antiauthoritarian point of view and communicate a romantic solidarity among society's outcasts. — Douglas Kent Hall

Plea Against the Death Penalty
Look, examine, reflect. You hold capital punishment up as an example. Why? Because of what it teaches. And just what is it that you wish to teach by means of this example? That thou shalt not kill. And how do you teach that "thou shalt not kill"? By killing.
I have examined the death penalty under each of its two aspects: as a direct action, and as an indirect one. What does it come down to? Nothing but something horrible and useless, nothing but a way of shedding blood that is called a crime when an individual commits it, but is (sadly) called "justice" when society brings it about. Make no mistake, you lawmakers and judges, in the eyes of God as in those of conscience, what is a crime when individuals do it is no less an offense when society commits the deed. — Victor Hugo

As the data from the past decade clarify, there is no evidence that poverty causes crime but a great deal of evidence that crime causes poverty. By aligning themselves against the police, against commonsense tactics like stop and frisk, against metal detectors in public housing, against swift and certain punishment, and for a broad array of legal protections for accused criminals, liberals helped to aggrieve the lives of the poor and society as a whole. — Mona Charen

It's kind of like sentencing. A lot of people say that we have a heavy sentence for this crime and a light sentence for another crime, and what we ought to do is reduce the heavy sentence so it's more in line with the other. Wrong. In most cases we ought to increase the light sentence and make it compatible with the heavy sentence, and be serious about punishment because we are becoming too tolerant as a society, folks, especially of crime, in too many parts of the country. — Rush Limbaugh

If the same punishment is prescribed for two crimes that injure society in different degrees, then men will face no stronger deterrent from committing the greater crime if they find it in their advantage to do so. — Cesare Beccaria

For people condemned to death, tradition prescribes an austere ceremony, calculated to emphasize that all passions and anger have died down, and that the act of justice represents only a sad duty towards society which moves even the executioner to pity for the victim. Thus the condemned man is shielded from all external cares, he is granted solitude and, should he want it, spiritual comfort; in short, care is taken that he should feel around him neither hatred nor arbitrariness, only necessity and justice, and by means of punishment, pardon. But to us this was not granted, for we were many and time was short. And in any case, what had we to repent, for what crime did we need pardon? — Primo Levi

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other. They are worse than ever when, at the termination of their punishment, they return to society. — Napoleon Bonaparte

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

Moreover, in the system of criminal punishment in the libertarian world, the emphasis would never be, as it is now, on "society's" jailing the criminal; the emphasis would necessarily be on compelling the criminal to make restitution to the victim of his crime. The present system, in which the victim is not recompensed but instead has to pay taxes to support the incarceration of his own attacker - would be evident nonsense in a world that focuses on the defense of property rights and therefore on the victim of crime. — Murray N. Rothbard

Private appropriation of the Earth's surface, the natural resources, and the means of life is nothing less a crime than a crime against humanity, but the comparative few who are beneficiaries of this iniquitous social arrangement, far from being viewed as criminals meriting punishment, are the exalted rulers of society, and the people they exploit gladly render them homage and obeisance. — Eugene V. Debs