Quotes About Punishment

By the fulfillment of my legal and moral duty I think I have earned punishment just as little as the tens of thousands of dutiful German officials who have now been imprisoned only because they carried out their duties.

Remarkably, altruistic punishment is accompanied by increased activity in the "pleasure centers" of the brain. It appears that maintaining the social order and the rules of fairness in this fashion is its own reward. Altruistic punishment could well be the glue that holds societies together. However, our brains are not designed to reward generosity as reliably as they punish meanness. Here again, we find a marked asymmetry between losses and gains.

His observation was astute and correct: occasions on which he praised a performance were likely to be followed by a disappointing performance, and punishments were typically followed by an improvement. But the inference he had drawn about the efficacy of reward and punishment was completely off the mark.

His observation was astute and correct: occasions on which he praised a performance were likely to be followed by a disappointing performance, and punishments were typically followed by an improvement. But the inference he had drawn about the efficacy of reward and punishment was completely off the mark. What he had observed is known as regression to the mean, which in that case was due to random fluctuations in the quality of performance.

we are statistically punished for being nice

I was telling them about an important principle of skill training: rewards for improved performance work better than punishment of mistakes.

important principle of skill training: rewards for improved performance work better than punishment of mistakes.

rewards for improved performance work better than punishment of mistakes. This proposition is supported by much evidence from research on pigeons, rats, humans, and other animals.

rewards for improved performance work better than punishment of mistakes.

Sentencing a felon is not a prediction. It is an evaluative judgment that seeks to match the sentence to the severity of the crime.

Two men, neither of whom had a criminal record, were convicted for cashing counterfeit checks in the amounts of $58.40 and $35.20, respectively. The first man was sentenced to fifteen years, the second to 30 days.

For embezzlement actions that were similar to one another, one man was sentenced to 117 days in prison, while another was sentenced to 20 years.

vengeance comes in all shapes and sizes.

Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man's life.

This notion of eternal punishment strikes me as one of the most perverse ideas ever devised. Monotheistic religions describe their God as merciful and compassionate, and in the same breath tell us that this merciful and compassionate God will sentence people to eternal torture if they don't believe in his existence, despite a complete lack of objective evidence. Is it just me, or are we looking at a bit of a contradiction?

These wretches, who never were alive.

There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, and sand eddies in a whirlwind.

Restorative justice is more interested in relationships. A crime is not act against a rule, it's an act against a person. When you harm somebody, you owe it to them to make things right. By making things right, you begin to heal your relationship with the community. Our system is focused on blame and punishment and not on healing and learning. - Lauren Abramson (RJ Program in Baltimore, MD)

Our system is focused on blame and punishment and not on healing and learning

Students seemed to be willing to behave better and pay more attention when there was somebody in the room who could kick their butts. In classes with younger children, corporal punishment was reinstated, because even though Americans had started thinking that spanking a kid was some kind of child abuse, many other countries knew better. Their kids still got spanked, and their crime rates were a lot lower than ours.

In fact the entire political leadership should face the death penalty under U.S. law for these actions. They're all eligible for the death penalty, according to the War Crimes Act passed by the 1996 Republican congress.

As we walked to Fr Walsh's office, Sting asked me what I thought our punishment might be. I had just been beaten for the missing page fiasco, and he told me, straight-faced, that his last thrashing was because his dad was a milkman.

Caning was a way of life at the school, and the boy, Sting and myself, even at an early age, had our fair share of thrashings.

The precursor of copyright law served to force the identification of the author so that he could be punished if he proved to be a heretic or a revolutionary