Top 45 Sentencing Quotes & Sayings

Every judge should have real-time access to the criminal background and history of defendants who appear in their courtrooms - so that sentencing and bail decisions can be made with that information.

The risk of racial prejudice infecting a capital sentencing proceeding is especially serious in light of the complete finality of the death sentence.

For any prosecutor, a decision to show leniency in sentencing must be weighed against multiple factors. Do they show remorse for their actions? Are they a threat to the public and law enforcement? Do they intend to contribute to society?

I'm intending to work on juvenile justice reform, sentencing reform, reentry, drug treatment, access to mental health care.

What has too often happened in the past is that people have threatened punishment but have failed to carry it out. It's imperative in any initiative that is undertaken that punishment be real and that there be truth in sentencing, and that the truly dangerous offenders - the recidivists and the career criminals - be put away and kept away.

The reality is, punishing people by using a sentencing enhancement that was clearly intended to punish people who had been doing something far worse is, by definition, a miscarriage of justice.

Locking people up without reducing the risk of them committing new crimes against new victims the minute they get out does not make for intelligent sentencing.

Who killed Chivalry? They need to get their sentencing Meanwhile we arguing and I can't get a sentence in

In response to the advocacy of groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, most states adopted tougher laws to punish drunk driving. Numerous states now have some type of mandatory sentencing for this offense - typically two days in jail for a first offense and two to ten days for a second offense. Possession of a tiny amount of crack cocaine, on the other hand, was given a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison.

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.

We need to change sentencing laws that disproportionately hurt people of color.

In the long run, a flexible sentencing procedure which works to rehabilitate offenders offers the best hope in the majority of cases in the Federal courts.

I am deeply impressed with the gravity and wisdom with which most federal judges approach the responsibility of sentencing. It is a difficult, soul-searching task at best.

Sentencing a political opponent to death after a show trial is no different to taking him out on the street and shooting him. In fact, it is worse because using the court system as a tool of state repression makes a mockery of the rule of law.

I think that we need to have an honest conversation in this country. This idea that somehow we're beyond sexism, beyond racism is just wrong. And this is where having an honest conversation with white men about their issues and their concerns, and having honest conversations about the experiences that African-Americans are still having, despite who's the president of the United States, in the criminal justice system that we see in sentencing, we see in policing and a lot of these issues.

You pay a price when you have an objective sentencing system. That is, nothing is perfect.

When you talk about mandatory minimums, it created a lot of unfairness in our sentencing.

When there's change, and people fear things, they become more dogmatic in their views. They lash out: you can see it in the media, scapegoating and penal sentencing.

Every day, lax sentencing costs lives.

Discrimination and multiple deprivations of human rights are also frequently part of the problem, sentencing entire populations to poverty... It is surely a matter of outrage that over half a million women die annually from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. This is nearly half the annual global death toll, and arguably, a direct reflection of the disempowerment of women in social, economic and political life.

I have been manipulated, and I have in turn manipulated others, by recording their response to suffering and misery. So there is guilt in every direction: guilt because I don't practice religion, guilt because I was able to walk away, while this man was dying of starvation or being murdered by another man with a gun. And I am tired of guilt, tired of saying to myself: “I didn't kill that man on that photograph, I didn't starve that child. That's why I want to photograph landscapes and flowers. I am sentencing myself to peace.

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.

Anyone who thinks it's smart to cut immigration is sentencing Australia to poverty.

Mandatory sentencing guidelines have become as complicated and detailed as the IRS code!

What do the nationalists say about killers punishing murderers and thieves sentencing looters?

Mandatory minimum sentencing has disproportionately affected blacks, Hispanics and others who often don't have the financial means to fight back.

You don't hear TV cops griping because they have to enforce some Draconian law that shouldn't be on the books in the first place, or lamenting vindictive excesses in sentencing. Hollywood, supposedly a frothing cauldron of liberalism, has always been conservative on crime.

There is a separation - a very clear separation - between the judiciary, the legal system, and the political system in this country, and that's why Labor has a problem with the issue of mandatory sentencing as a principle.

We need to take a hard look at the war on drugs and the number of non-violent offenders who end up getting their lives destroyed by going to prison. We need to look at mandatory minimum sentencing and give judges more flexibility when there are issues of drug abuse or addiction.

One of my priorities is criminal justice reform, and there is certainly bipartisan appetite for that. I think we need to eliminate the cash bail system. We need to eliminate mandatory minimums. We need sentencing reform. I think we need parole reform as well.

Intolerance has always been one of the cornerstones of Christianity - the glorious heritage of the Inquisition. It's no coincidence that most of my abusive mail - sentencing me to exquisite Oriental tortures and relegating me to hell-fire and damnation -comes from self-admitted Catholics.

If you look at sentencing in America, African-Americans and Latinos get sentenced for the same crimes at very different rates.

I worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week for years. Being a comic book artist is like sentencing yourself to life imprisonment at hard labor in solitary confinement. I don't think I'd do it again.

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.

The thing that happens is that politicians run on tough-on-crime rhetoric. You appeal to the public and say, 'Let's put more money into taller fences, tougher laws, tougher sentencing, handcuffs,' and where does that money come from? Well, immediately, it comes out of all the money needed for corrections.

While awaiting sentencing, I decided to give stand-up comedy a shot. The judge had suggested I get my act together, and I took him seriously.

The federal sentencing guidelines should be revised downward. By contrast to the guidelines, I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences. In too many cases, mandatory minimum sentences are unwise and unjust.

Some of the folks we see are in for defending themselves against their abusers, or drug charges that, because of the California state prison system, they have mandatory sentencing and life in prison for three counts of simple drug possession, or whatever. I find it not only helpful but, I think, necessary in maintaining my grounding and my perspective. Because music is such an unrealistic job to have. It's a really lucky job to have, but it's also very unrealistic.

Well, one thing, you got to stand in a courtroom and listen to a judge sentencing you to 25 years in prison before you realize that freedom of expression can no longer be taken for granted.

For far too long, victims' rights have been discussed only in the context of sentencing. Sentencing is very important, but the debate obscures something much more fundamental: most victims have so little faith in our criminal justice system that they do not access it at all.

The results of inequity and bias impact everything from suspension rates, to housing access, to health outcomes, to medical interventions, to job opportunity and promotions, to criminal sentencing, and even to the very safety of the water one drinks and air one breathes.

The Singapore judicial system's shameful recourse to using torture - in the form of caning - to punish crimes that should be misdemeanors is indicative of a blatant disregard for international human rights standards, one of the defendants said that sentencing day was the darkest day of his life, but in reality every day that Singapore keeps caning on its books is a dark day for the country's international reputation.

Yet far from putting any meaningful constraints on law enforcement in this war, the U.S. Supreme Court has given the police license to stop and search just about anyone, in any public place, without a shred of evidence of criminal activity, and it has also closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias at every stage of the judicial process from stops and searches to plea bargaining and sentencing.

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

We hold that the reckless disregard for human life implicit in knowingly engaging in criminal activity known to carry a grave risk of death represents a highly culpable mental state that may be taken into account in making a capital sentencing judgment not inevitable, lethal result.