The best antidote for crime is justice. The irony we often fail to appreciate is that the more justice people enjoy, the fewer crimes they commit. Crime is the natural offspring of an unjust society.
Interpretation
Justice serves as a powerful remedy against crime, implying that fairness reduces criminal activity.
This quote by Gerry Spence highlights the intrinsic relationship between justice and crime, suggesting that a just society fosters a sense of fairness that ultimately reduces the occurrence of crime. It underlines the irony that when people feel treated equitably, they are less likely to engage in criminal behavior, positioning injustice as the primary catalyst for crime.
In practice
In a debate about criminal justice reform, this quote can emphasize the importance of equity.
Today the insatiable quest for profit promotes the new slavery. In bewildering ways, the new is more pernicious than the old, for the New American Slave is told he is free, and he clings to that myth as if his life depended upon it, a suspicion that cannot be totally ignored.
When any system has for its goal the advancement of the system over the betterment of its individual members, such a system is embedded in slavery.
The erosion of a nation's concern for life and for individual rights, has always preceded the intrusion of tyranny.
The true test of liberty is the right to test it, the right to question it, the right to speak to my neighbors, to grab them by the shoulders and look into their eyes and ask, “Are we free?” I have thought that if we are free, the answer cannot hurt us. And if we are not free, must we not hear the answer?
The function of the law is not to provide justice or to preserve freedom. The function of the law is to keep those who hold power, in power.
The ultimate enemy of Democracy is not the drug dealer of the crooked politician or the crazed skinhead. The ultimate enemy is the New King that has become so powerful it can murder its own citizens with impunity.
Justice delayed is democracy denied.
A jury too often has at least one member more ready to hang the panel than to hang the traitor.
It is not a charity but a right, not bounty but justice, that I am pleading for. The present state of civilization is as odious as it is unjust. It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be, and it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it. The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together
It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put - without delay, and with tenderness - back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.
When I signed on to letting the death penalty back in, I thought the procedural protections against executing an innocent person were stronger than they turned out to be.
People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.
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