Politics are a bit ahead of you, at least in the most advanced countries (Scandinavia etc.): They have almost completely eliminated concepts such as (moral) guilt from law. They may send you to (a rather comfortable) prison, but never as retribution. Only being an actual, ongoing danger to others can justify taking someone's freedom. Same with drug addiction: it's treated as a disease, not personal failure.
> They may send you to (a rather comfortable) prison, but never as retribution.
this was contested in a recent HN thread[1], with regards to norway in particular:
> Only a few prisoners enjoy the freedom of this island, which is equivalent to a trustee camp in a US min security prison. The rest who were given 10+ year sentences are in complete isolation in what the media loves to refer to as hotel prisons. In these cells everything is provided for you including your own shower, therefore there's no reasons for the guards to ever let you out and you stay in there 23hrs per day. Because the media calls them hotels, it prevents any prisoner from being able to complain and be taken seriously, so often these guys will either light their cells on fire and hopefully get transferred to one of the older style jails so they can talk to other inmates, or they just kill themselves.
