A Quote by Howard Zinn

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.

Howard Zinn

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Am Conditions Convinced Crime Cruel Culture Cycle Cycle Of Violence Desperation Does Elimination Endless Go Greed Homelessness Idea Imprisonment Maintaining Most Mostly Nothing Our Poverty Powerful Pretending Problem Punished Racism Retribution Rich Root Solve Substitute Those Thus Unemployment Unpunished Useless Victims Violence Way Which

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Howard Zinn
American - Historian
August 24, 1922 - January 27, 2010

suicide is a crime - the only crime that, if successful, guarantees that the perpetrator will not be punished for it. This makes it the most serious crime of all.

Joanne Greenberg

I think there is a lot of crime caused by desperation, and it doesn't mean that people commit crime because they're poor, but certainly a lot of people who are poor commit crime and they might not if they weren't poor. You understand the difference there? That's not news, but it comes up when I hear people say poverty doesn't affect crime - that crime is still going down in America even though the economy is bad.

Peter Moskos

Many writers claim that nearly all crime is caused by economic conditions, or in other words that poverty is practically the whole cause of crime. Endless statistics have been gathered on this subject which seem to show conclusively that property crimes are largely the result of the unequal distribution of wealth. But crime of any class cannot be safely ascribed to a single cause. Life is too complex, heredity is too variant and imperfect, too many separate things contribute to human behavior, to make it possible to trace all actions to a single cause.

Clarence Darrow

The community does not fight crime well by chasing it; after-the-fact, crime has won and the target of violence is injured or worse. Crime is fought best not by chasing it, but by facing it before it can become a completed act. Crime is fought best at the scene of the violence.

John Longenecker

We have a problem with drugs? Let's declare war on drugs! We have a problem with crime? Let's declare war on crime! We have a problem with violence? Let's declare war on violence! The deeply ingrained American attitude that we can solve any problem w/enough force creates, feeds, & rewards the epidemic of violence we are currently experiencing.

Peter McWilliams

All novels are about crime. You'd be hard pressed to find any novel that does not have an element of crime. I don't see myself as a crime novelist, but there are crimes in my books. That's the nature of storytelling, if you want to reflect the real world.

Carl Hiaasen

The crime should be punished no matter whether poverty or wealth caused it to occur, because the crime is wrong.

Ernest Van den Haag

The best crime stories are always about the crime and its consequences - you know, 'Crime And Punishment' is the classic. Where you have the crime, and its consequences are the story, but considering the crime and the consequences makes you think about the society in which the crime takes place, if you see what I mean.

Paul Greengrass

I grew up reading crime fiction mysteries, true crime - a lot of true crime - and it is traditionally a male dominated field from the outside, but from the inside what we know, those of us who read it, is that women buy the most crime fiction, they are by far the biggest readers of true crime, and there's a voracious appetite among women for these stories, and I know I feel it - since I was quite small I wanted to go to those dark places.

Megan Abbott

television and radio violence was considered by most experts of minimal importance as a contributory cause of youthful killing. ... there were always enough experts to assure the public that crime and violence had nothing to do with crime and violence.

Marya Mannes

Once I got interested in organized crime, and, specifically, Jewish organized crime, I got very interested in it. I have learned that, like my narrator Hannah, I'm a crime writer in my own peculiar way. Crime with a capital "C" is the subject that I'm stuck with - even Sway is about "crime" in a certain way. The nice thing about crime is that it enables you to deal with some big questioO

Zachary Lazar

The [abortion] excommunication affects all those who commit this crime with knowledge of the penalty attached, and thus includes those accomplices without which the crime would not have been committed.

Pope John Paul II

Tonight, I propose a 21st Century Crime Bill to deploy the latest technologies and tactics to make our communities even safer. Our balanced budget will help put up to 50,000 more police on the street in the areas hardest hit by crime, and then to equip them with new tools from crime-mapping computers to digital mug shots. We must break the deadly cycle of drugs and crime.

William J. Clinton

The Crime Victims Fund is distributed to service providers who assist millions of crime victims annually throughout our communities in a host of ways. It is paid for by fines levied on criminals, not taxpayers.

Jim Costa

Illegitimacy is the single most important social problem of our time - more important than crime, drugs, poverty, illiteracy, welfare or homelessness because it drives everything else.

Charles A. Murray

The causes of crime are very complicated. But there is a very big literature, as you know, about single parenthood in crime, about race in crime, and about poverty in crime.

Bill Bennett

A Quote by Howard Zinn

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