Criminal Reform Quotes & Sayings

The room had grown smothery. He wanted to be out in some cool and bitter breeze, miles above the cities, and to live serene and detached back in the corners of his mind — F Scott Fitzgerald

Greet him with gentle words and caresses and welcome him onto their bed, where he would curl, purring, warm in the crook of a bent knee. — Erin Hunter

The New York Times, baffled by Delaware's obstinacy, tried to argue the state into change in an 1867 editorial. If it had previously existed in [the convicted person's] bosom a spark of self-respect this exposure to public shame utterly extinguishes it. Without the hope that springs eternal in the human breast, without some desire to reform and become a good citizen, and the feeling that such a thing is possible, no criminal can ever return to honorable courses. The boy of eighteen who is whipped at New Castle [a Delaware whipping post] for larceny is in nine cases out of ten ruined. With his self-respect destroyed and the taunt and sneer of public disgrace branded upon his forehead, he feels himself lost and abandoned by his fellows. - QUOTED IN ROBERT GRAHAM CALDWELL, Red Hannah: Delaware's Whipping Post — Jon Ronson

I don't believe in Him, and if He does exist, I don't like Him. His type of gods aren't gods who echo how mortals behave. They're gods who are held up as example of perfection to be emulated. They're not gods of the people. They're remote and inaccessible, they demand blind, unthinking obedience from their followers. They're dictators. We Aesir and Vanir, by contrast, are mirrors. Other gods rule. We reflect and magnify. We are you, only more so. We share your flaws and foibles. We are as humanlike as we are divine, and I think we are all the better for that. — James Lovegrove

Actually criminal sanctions that are given could be up to five years for violating the rules and regulations under the campaign finance reform. This is like the Alien and Sedition Act of years and years ago, decades ago. — Jay Alan Sekulow

I agree with President Obama and Attorney General Holder that we need to reform our criminal sentencing laws. — Raul Labrador

I'd like to continue being involved with issues that animated my time as attorney general - criminal-justice reform and civil rights especially. I don't just want to give speeches; I'd like to involve myself in this work in a systematic way. — Eric Holder

We're not mere spectators, or a cosmic accident, or some sideshow, or the Greek chorus to the main event. The human experience IS the main event. — Terence McKenna

I am happy that the urgency to reform our broken criminal justice system has found allies all across the political spectrum. — Cory Booker

I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten. — Henry Louis Gates

An error which is not perpetuated cannot be viewed as any error at all. — Robert Sheckley

We see only a part of the surface of things. The rest will be forever hidden from us, to be appreciated for its felt but unfathomed presence. — Richard Taylor

I think one of the things that I don't think people focus on is that there are some red states that have done some really innovative things when it comes to criminal justice reform, including on rehabilitation, reentry efforts. I think one of the things that we have seen in that regard is that you save money. — Eric Holder

A reform in the system of criminal jurisprudence, by which the death penalty shall no longer be inflicted ... and by which our so-called prisons shall be virtually transformed into vast reformatory workshops, from which the unfortunate may emerge to be useful members of society, instead of the alienated citizens they now are. — Victoria Woodhull

At this moment the phrase "police reform" has come into vogue, and the actions of our publicly appointed guardians have attracted attention presidential and pedestrian. You may have heard the talk of diversity, sensitivity training, and body cameras. These are all fine and applicable, but they understate the task and allow the citizens of this country to pretend that there is real distance between their own attitudes and those of the ones appointed to protect them. The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country's criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority. The abuses that have followed from these policies - the sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects - are the product of democratic will. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

We are the in midst of a bipartisan moment as it relates to criminal justice reform and dealing with mass incarceration in America which disproportionately impacts the African-American community. — Hakeem Jeffries

The accession of not one but three illegal drug users in a row to the US presidency constitutes an existential challenge to the prohibitionist regime. The fact that some of the most successful people of our time, be it in business, finances, politics, entertainment or the arts, are current or former substance users is a fundamental refutation of its premises and a stinging rebuttal of its rationale. A criminal law that is broken at least once by 50% of the adult population and that is broken on a regular basis by 20% of the same adult population is a broken law, a fatally flawed law. How can a democratic government justify a law that is consistently broken by a substantial minority of the population? What we are witnessing here is a massive case of civil disobedience not seen since alcohol prohibition in the 1930 in the US. On what basis can a democratic system justify the stigmatization and discrimination of a strong minority of as much as 20% of its population? — Jeffrey Dhywood

At a time when the current and two former US presidents have admittedly indulged, as have politicians of all stripes from Al Gore to Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin and over 50% of the adult US population, the credibility tipping point of the War on Drugs propaganda has long been passed. All that appears to be missing is the political courage to admit failure and move on to more realistic and efficient policies. What will it take for decision makers to display the wisdom and garner the courage to end the disastrous War on Drugs and responsibly take charge of drug production and trade instead of leaving it in the hands of extremely dangerous and powerful international criminal organizations? — Jeffrey Dhywood

The most thoroughly and relentlessly damned, banned, excluded, condemned, forbidden, ostracized, ignored, suppressed, repressed, robbed, brutalized and defamed of all 'Damned Things' is the individual human being. The social engineers, statisticians, psychologists, sociologists, market researchers, landlords, bureaucrats, captains of industry, bankers, governors, commissars, kings and presidents are perpetually forcing this 'Damned Thing' into carefully prepared blueprints and perpetually irritated that the 'Damned Thing' will not fit into the slot assigned it. The theologians call it a sinner and try to reform it. The governor calls it a criminal and tries to punish it. The psychologist calls it a neurotic and tries to cure it. Still, the 'Damned Thing' will not fit into their slots. — Robert Anton Wilson

What loomed was a flayed man with his brisket tacked open like a cooling beef and his skull peeled, blue and bulbous and palely luminescent, black grots his eyeholes and bloody mouth gaped tongueless. The traveler had seized his fingers in his jaws, but it was not alone this horror that he cried. Beyond the flayed man dimly adumbrate another figure paled, for his surgeons move about the world even as you and I. — Cormac McCarthy

When the hornet hangs in the hollyhock,
And the brown bee drones in the rose,
And the west is a red-streaked four-o'clock,
And summer is near its close,
It's, Oh!, For the gate, and the locust lane;
And dusk, and dew, and home again! — Madison Cawein

Generosity is often the stalking horse of control. — Anne Truitt

Punishment is not for revenge, but to lessen crime and reform the criminal. — Elizabeth Fry

My heart and passion has always been to reform the criminal justice system. I want to be a public servant, and I wanted to be a prosecutor because I felt it was the best way forward. — Marilyn Mosby

Walter made me understand why we have to reform a system of criminal justice that continues to treat people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent. A system that denies the poor the legal help they need, that makes wealth and status more important than culpability, must be changed. Walter's case taught me that fear and anger are a threat to justice; they can infect a community, a state, or a nation and make us blind, irrational, and dangerous. I reflected on how mass imprisonment has littered the national landscape with carceral monuments of reckless and excessive punishment and ravaged communities with our hopeless willingness to condemn and discard the most vulnerable among us. — Bryan Stevenson

A person who has a criminal mind and would be punished by the referees and they will remain in isolation from others as an opportunity for them to reform. When he or she get released from his or her referees' custody, he or she would have a better understanding about the ethical and moral values of his or her society and not make the same mistake again. — Saaif Alam

Much of the way food has been shaped and formed in prisons is due to the cultural thought about prisoners in general, and how they should be treated by society and by the state. Food in prison is a reflection of culture and cultural thinking about criminal justice and reform. — Erika Camplin

A soul trembling to sit by a hearth so bright,
To exist again, it's enough if I borrow from
Your lips the breath of my name you murmur all night. — Stephane Mallarme

Society during the last hundred years has been alternately perplexed and encouraged respecting the two great questions: how shall the criminal and pauper be disposed of in order to reduce crime and reform the criminal on the one hand and, on the other, to diminish pauperism and restore the pauper to useful citizenship? — Dorothea Dix

I encourage everyone to pay attention to the issues that matter to you, from jobs and the economy, to education and our schools, to criminal justice reform. Whatever it is that you care about, make sure you use your voice. — Two Chainz