Sentencing Guidelines Quotes

For some people, their idea of getting tough is longer suspended sentences.

Defendants are being evaluated based on numerical grid without any aggravating circumstances being considered. The effect has been to transfer the disparity from the judge to the prosecutor allowing for a great deal of leeway on indictments.

Generally speaking, the public appetite for criminal justice policy is just tough talk.

I have prosecuted very serious criminals who are now serving very long jail sentences.

Given the devastation that crime can visit on families and communities, I will err on being a little too tough on crime than being too soft on crime.

I believe having judges with real world, frontline experience as a prosecutor is a good thing.

Whilst long prison sentences will always be right for those who commit the most serious crimes, particularly of a violent or sexual nature, the fact is that the vast majority of all offenders will at some point be released.

I don't know why we need so many more prisons when the crooks seem so happy in the Senate.

I think we need to update the existing laws to create uniformity across the states so that all people with mental illness who find themselves in the criminal justice system for committing horrific crimes will be treated exactly the same.

There is certainly nothing anomalous in punishing the crime of murder differently in different jurisdictions.

The reduction in gun violence President Obama claims to desperately want comes from law enforcement and prosecution, not from political rhetoric, lectures and sentence commutations for federal firearm law offenders and felons.

Even without mandatory sentences, judges are still capable of levying tough penalties for serious offenses - and just as in states like Texas that have 'tough on crime' reputations, this can be done without jeopardizing public safety.

L. Ram Saran Das was sentenced to death in 1915, and the sentence was later commuted to life transportation. Today myself, sitting in the condemned cell, I can let the readers know as authoritatively that the life-imprisonment is comparatively a far harder lot than that of death.

There is no good reason why police, or gaols, or the administration of justice, should be differently managed in one part of the kingdom and in another.

None of my peers avoided prison. None of 'em.

First of all, I didn't suggest that we should simply get rid of all prisons.

I understood that with the swipe of my pen as a prosecutor, I would have the decision in my pen to make a decision about someone's life.

I didn't feel at all guilty about what I did, so I couldn't plead guilty, even though I would get a more lenient sentence.

Circumstances of crimes vary. So do motives. And so do prospects for rehabilitation. The number of imponderables makes it impossible to sentence by formula and still sentence justly.

But the single overwhelming reason why jails are bursting is longer sentences given for more crimes.

Now, I - for several years while I was researching this book, I felt quite obsessed by thoughts about sentencing, punishment, how judges arrive at their decisions.

I believe indeterminate sentencing can be extremely useful, but I also believe that any such system should always take into consideration the special knowledge as to the facts in a case which only the trial judge possesses.

No funding for alternative sentencing instead of more prisons.

Manditory minimums were almost always excessive, and they made me feel unethical, even dirty.

I remember the people I knew in prison; I was very fortunate to know them - they came from 1910, 1920, 1930.