“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.” HumanitarianismCriminal JusticeCriminal Justice Reform Author:Robert G Ingersoll
“Degradation has been thoroughly tried...and the result was that those who inflicted the punishments became as degraded as their victims.” HumanitarianismCriminal Justice ReformCriminal Justice Policy Author: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?” HumanitarianismCriminal JusticeCriminal Justice Reform Author:Robert G Ingersoll
“Those who are not affected by the agonies of the bad, will in a little time care nothing for the sufferings of the good.” HumanitarianismCriminal Justice Reform Author: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.” HumanitarianismCriminal JusticeCriminal Justice Reform Author: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.” HumanitarianismCriminal JusticeCriminal Justice Reform Author: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.” HumanitarianismCriminal JusticeCriminal Justice Reform Author:Robert G Ingersoll