The criminal “justice” system can provide only the vaguest approximation of real Justice. Think of who makes the laws, and who enforces them. The system is designed to make the people with power feel like they’re being protected from those who scare them — those who are different than them. When true Justice is the result of a criminal case, it is mere coincidence.

A wiser lawyer than me once said, in a debate on the death penalty:

We have heard talk of justice. Is there anybody who knows what justice is? No one on earth can measure out justice. Can you look at any man and say what he deserves — whether he deserves hanging by the neck until dead or life in prison or thirty days in prison or a medal? The human mind is blind to all who seek to look in at it and to most of us that look out from it. Justice is something that man knows little about. He may know something about charity and understanding and mercy, and he should cling to those as far as he can.

That was Clarence Darrow. He pointed out that each of us is the product of his or her heredity and environment, neither of which we have any control over. If we are the product of our genes and our upbringing, who can say that we deserve to go to prison for what we do?