[optiongm]

If you want to take a narrow view I am sure that is true.

However criminal justice is charged with being a management tool of society, and we need to manage those who fail to comply with our laws in the most effective way. I don't think it is effective for people who say they are sorry when caught and who act contrite, and for whom a proper check of their life and behavior to that point shows them as an OK bloke, to be treated the same as the guy with a long history of getting drunk and beating his wife and who tells the police and judge to go get ****ed.

I am thinking the contrite fellow might respond to rehabilitation a little better than the determined sociopath. So I would husband my limited criminal justice budget and spend it more on detaining the guy who figuratively and literally gives justice the finger, than on wasting years of costly jail time on the guy more likely to have learned his lesson...

The biggest problem I have with this sentence is.....people perceive theft from a Corporation and theft from individuals as two separate issues....if this guy had stolen engines out of your car I doubt you would be so lenient....its a progressive narrative that big Corporations are bad so theft against their property either intellectually or goods is some how just some harmless act......