Punishment

To properly consider appropriate punishment for a crime, we need to make several Utopian assumptions. These are that the law is moral and logical and protects society. That the criminal is actually guilty. that the punishment is applied relatively quickly. Perhaps a few more other considerations, but it is already clear that problems exist. 

The main purpose of laws should be to protect society. So the best punishment is simply to remove the criminal from that society. This also acts as a deterrent to other possible criminals. But creeping around the edges are the need for “justice” or revenge, particularly by victims, but also by other citizens. And opposed to that, at least in “modern civilization,” the need to keep punishment in bounds so it does not become an end in itself or a form of entertainment. 

At one end of the punishment scale is “mass murder” _ the slaughter of random people. Of course this is rarely “mass murder” if carried out by military or police, so even that is fuzzy. At the other end is the poor starving mother stealing a loaf of bread to feed her family. And a whole range of shadow crimes _ usually financial but also ecological, “moral”, and so on _ with dispersed and often vaporous victims. 

In ideal societies, all this is fair, transparent, and supported by the community. And laws remain up to date, punishment proportionate to damage. 

How far we have drifted into impossible dreamland already.