Criminology Quotes

“Nobody got murdered before lunch. But nobody. People weren't up to it. You needed a good lunch to get both the blood-sugar and blood-lust levels up.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“The deviant and the conformist...are creatures of the same culture, inventions of the same imagination.”
― Kai Erikson

“We are all capable of becoming something monstrous.”
― Cyraus Foldger

“...And eventually, he (Charles Manson) testified to an empty court, as Bugliosi had convinced the presiding judge Older, that Manson's hypnotic powers might convince the jury he was innocent.”
― Nikolas Schreck

“Every society has the criminals that it deserves.”
― Havelock Ellis

“I need not pause to explain that crime is not a disease. It is criminology that is a disease.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State

“If a deadly snake slithering around in a pre-school bit a child, would you box it up for a month as punishment, and then release it to prey upon the children once again?”
― Edward M. Wolfe, When Everything Changed

“Don't come back till you have him!" the Ticktockman said, very quietly, very sincerely, extremely dangerously.

They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardioplate crossoffs. They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stiktytes. They used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks. They used cops. They used search&seizure. They used fallaron. They used betterment incentive. They used fingerprints. They used the Bertillon system. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery. They used Raoul Mitgong, but he didn't help much. They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology.

And what the hell: they caught him.”
― Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman

“Serial murders are a bit like natural disasters: in the scheme of things they are quite rare, but when they happen they demand our attention. They interest us for several reasons, but especially because they are so dramatically threatening, and they profoundly challenge our sense of our own everyday safety.

[Todd R. Clear, Foreword]”
― Eric W. Hickey, Serial Murderers and Their Victims

“Stalkers have an obsessive over-identification with their unwilling target but also a latent envy of their talents and/or beauty, If they can't possess the person totally, they will destroy the victim's qualities that they can never have.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The offender must be able to give something back. But criminals are most often poor people. They have nothing to give. The answers to this are many. It is correct that our prisons are by and large filled with poor people. We let the poor pay with the only commodity that is close to being equally distributed in society: time.”
― Nils Christie, Limits to Pain: The Role of Punishment in Penal Policy

“There is a difference between the irresistible impulse, and the impulse not resisted. And that is why the best thieves don't get caught.”
― Efrat Cybulkiewicz

“Death Penalty' in rarest of rare cases, should adorn criminal justice system in India,which would operate as a detterent mechanism. Abrogation of capital punishment and it's obliteration from the law, would be a great folly. In the human rights perspective, concretising the human rights of the criminal(perpetrator of a particular offense attracting Capital punishment ) by negating Human Rights of the victim is again a murder of justice.”
― Henrietta Newton Martin

“Try a crime you end a criminal, treat an environment you end crime.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sleepless for Society

“Guilt is not an intrinsically helpful emotion for future decision-making. And often the spiral of guilt and shame can lead criminals to remain criminals.
This idea was so intriguing to me, for personal reasons that should arlready be clear, that I later took it on for my undergraduate senior thesis. My paper, which I turned in six weeks early and for which I received an A, was titled "Remorse and Absolution: Peas in a Pod or Dangerous Bunkmates?”
― Sascha Rothchild, Blood Sugar

“Most criminals were dumb, and he took the view that the whole science of criminology was essentially flawed, since much of its theory was based on the study of criminals who had been caught, and were therefore either stupid or unlucky, as opposed to the study of those who had not been caught, and were therefore smart and had a little luck on their side, but just a little. Luck ran out, but smart was for life.”
― John Connolly, The Burning Soul

“Criminal profiling is the writing process in reverse. Writers create characters and project their actions forwards into a timeline. Profilers are left with the aftermath of an offender's behaviour and must extrapolate backwards to establish their characteristics.”
― Stewart Stafford

“If pain is too bad to be executed by everybody, and seen by everybody, is it not because it is too bad?”
― Nils Christie, Limits to Pain: The Role of Punishment in Penal Policy

“Law must never be taken as gospel – today's law may become tomorrow's crime, today's crime may become tomorrow's law.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mücadele Muhabbet: Gospel of An Unarmed Soldier

“Vagrancy laws and other laws defining activities such as "mischief" and "insulting gestures" as crimes were enforced vigorously against blacks. The aggressive enforcement of these criminal offenses opened up an enormous market for convict leasing.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“The stimulus to thought lies in the detail provided.”
― Dennis Howitt, Introduction to Forensic & Criminal Psychology

“Every single sexual deviation is overwhelmingly dominated by white males. And most sexually related ritualistic crimes are committed by white males.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey Into the Minds of Sexual Predators

“Papini's speech accelerates as he walks toward the morgue, leaving a trail of lemon in his wake.

'It's the so-called qualitative leap, Quintana. At night we come up with daring plans that would change us completely, were they to become a reality. But these plans dissolve in the morning light, and we go back to being the same mediocrities as before, doggedly ruining our own lives. This doesn't happen to you? With these men, it's different. Why do you think they're still around, if they're so inferior to us? It's a question of adaptation. They act. They carry out the plans they make at night. What's more, they're depraved. They wear too much pomade, smell like tobacco, sweat bile, and masturbate frequently. They have no morals. They do, however, have an ethics that neither you nor I could comprehend, which involves eradicating us. Do you understand?'

'How do you know they wear too much pomade?'

'You're taking me very literally, Quintana.”
― Roque Larraquy, La comemadre

“Antidote to Crime (The Sonnet)

The way to a crime-free world is simple,
But it lies outside of all the legal 'n partisan muck.
Take away the guns from the kids on the street,
Put books in their hands and food in their stomach.
By the time they grow up into young adults,
The prehistoric warmongers will be in death bed.
The children whose childhood you restored,
Will all be ready to hold the reins of world stage.
Law, policy 'n all that stuff surely have their place,
But not as the antidote to crime, chaos 'n descension.
The permanent antidote to crime is education alone,
Law ‘n policy are just to ensure its true democratization.
More than trying a crime, focus on treating environment.
Feed the hungry ‘n establish education, free from any debt.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“The way to a crime-free world is simple, but it lies outside of all the legal 'n partisan muck. Take away the guns from the kids on the street, put books in their hands and food in their stomach.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“I knew that the teenage brain was not fully formed, the frontal lobes not yet connected. Therefore a clear understanding between cause and effect cannot be wholly processed by a teenager, which can make their behaviour seem reckless and erratic. That's why teens so often drag race, or shoplift, or experiment with cocaine in a Denny's parking lot.”
― Sascha Rothchild, Blood Sugar

“This basic misguided survival instinct coupled with most teens seeing the world around them through the narrow lens of their own limited experience makes it harder for them to be compassionate. In essence, teenagers are like little psychopaths. Running around, making bad decisions, without a thought of how those decisions will affect themselves or others.
Knowing this about the brain brings up interesting dilemmas when it comes to teens being tried as adults in courts of law.”
― Sascha Rothchild, Blood Sugar

“Law is like a band-aid. Band-aids don't heal the wound, they only prevent further infection while your natural immune system does the healing. Likewise, law doesn't cure crime, it only keeps crime in check, while individual accountability treats the inhumanity that causes crime. And at some point the band-aid must come off, because, just like a body covered in band-aid is the sign of a sick person, a society covered in law is the sign of a sick species.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“The world needs less cops and more teachers. Law enforcement only produces an illusion of order, it's the teachers who can create a crime-free society.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“Need Teachers Not Cops (The Sonnet)

The world needs less cops and more teachers,
While cops enforce law, teachers instill accountability.
Thus law enforcement only produces an illusion of order,
It's the teachers who can create a crime-free society.
If students are the future, teachers are future maker,
So be civilized and focus on lifting teachers and students.
Government of baboons invests in police 'n defense contracts,
While a truly civilized government invests in education.
Arm the teachers with books and students with sustenance,
Then watch them accomplish the impossible future,
A future of true lasting order, reform and harmony,
Which a billion police cannot achieve in a billion years.
Society that empowers teachers empowers peace.
Society that empowers police empowers malice.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission