I am not advocating a 'justice' system without consequences. You will have consequences. Consequences are just another input into our brains that do help deter some people from some behaviours. I don't kill people because I'd go to jail. I don't kill people because I don't want to hurt them (and that is on my programming, upbringing, possibly nature to a degree as well). I think the only way I'd kill someone is by accident or in a spur of the moment when emotionally disturbed by an incident (me or my family fear for our lives). Society has mostly accounted for those cases and I may not even go to jail if I did it, because people largely can relate to those situations and they agree it's not 'fair' send me to jail for them. However, there's several sectors of the population no one seems to be able or want to relate to (poor people that got little opportunities and guidance in life, abused people, mentally ill, psychopaths, a mix of all of that etc), and the people creating the rules therefore decide to 'punish' them in the name of justice for being bad and because we have not devised (and not invested enough time either) a better and more humane way to deal with them. In theory we want them to be reformed, in practice, is mostly about retribution and putting undesirables away.