Concept of Guilt

We live in societies and due to the variations of thought processes present within the Human race we have made laws. Laws designed to protect us.
However the laws are based not on right and wrong, good and bad, but an amalgamation of communal ideals.
The "thou shalt and shalt nots" and things pushed strong enough for. These laws aren't solid and can be changed as needed (slavery good, slavery bad) even when against the "thou shalts" and the books they are found in (slavery good, slavery bad).
But what isn't taken into account is the why of the crime.
We have varying degrees of murder even down to the point of being incompetent to even stand trial, yet the "why" question isn't always asked. Nor is it taken into the process.
"I had a stroke and lost control of the car!" Would not result in the death penalty no matter how many lives are lost.
And culpability is taken into account.
"My pet Bangle tiger's cage was open causin' I hates my neighbor." Resulting in a long stay in prison.
We are supposedly an enlightened society yet people are punished harshly when extenuating circumstances exist all the time.
The drug addict stealing hubcaps, wallets or ATMs via whatever means is being punished for something medically and possibly psychologically out of their control. There isn't universal healthcare, there aren't enough treatment programs and psychological help centers and or practitioners aren't available.
They have no place to turn for help and their primary, overriding need put them in this situation.
So what do we do as an enlightened society?
We dehumanize them profoundly. We beat them to a pulp whether or not resisting. We incarcerate them knowing full well they are addicts and giving no medical or psychological attention to their obvious problem. Of course laughing as they go through days of withdrawals.
We dump them in prison. Again no attention paid to their addiction and what is prison?
Well in a "christian" nation it should be a place of rehabilitation. Where the wrong doer can be helped on a better path.
Unfortunately in the United States prison is a congested holding pen designed with the archaic belief that "make a situation as bad as we can the criminals won't return!"
So this addicted individual in need of help from the society they live in, who, yes did go against the law, needs not to be abused and shoved in a box.
This person needs to be helped so their need for drugs is quelled and they can return to our collective warm bosom.
These people and others around us with their needs which push up against or break our laws are in no way disposable. For some reason, we as a society see them all as bad and wrong. Period!
But life is not black and white. There is a reason why we all lean away from the "norm" in whatever way we need. Sometimes those needs push us too far away from the flock and if they result in crime then yes this must be stopped.
But treating those with a medical or physiological need by worse than throwing them away only shows that our society is not is desperately in the wrong.
Further, that need should never lead to permanent ostracization and that is what the legal system truly hands down.
To go through withdrawals or to try to manage a psychological condition without the medicine, legal or otherwise, you NEED in a holding pen where you are isolated, physically, mentally, emotionally and sexually brutalized is for lack of a better idiom "hell on earth".
These people are our family, just like all of us and it seems just fine to subject them to this state.
Drugs can be obtained in prison, for a price of course, so all we have done is to take them out of our neighborhoods and put them somewhere else where they continue to do the illegal activities that put them there.
So some time later, very often decades later, if they survive in any way intact, they are released. Their debt to society paid.
Any concept of humanity summarily beaten out of them by an enlightened society.
So now "post judgment" we welcome them back into society by not renting to them, not employing them no matter education or experience. Even families, like the loving society they live in, turn their backs on them.
So, no help, psychological, medical, familial, they re-offend, imagine that!
President trump says they should be killed off as a blight on society and everyone jumps up and down, yet execution is profoundly more humane.
In your eyes they are dead. Dead enough to put in the hell of jail to protect your hubcaps and capital. Dead enough to not give a modicum of help or care.
Shit, just put them out of their misery.
It would be more just than the current standard of justice.

Good luck out there