Political Memes

I think it should break down like this,

Civil Law, for civil disputes related to property, nuisance behavior, and other such day to day business.

Criminal law, where sentences start actually including punitive time of some variety or other has to cause harm, has to be intentional or so damaging that not having intended to do harm doesn't cover just how much harm was did. Non violent offenders should be fasttracked to work based rehabilitation programs in supervised housing. Violent offenders need time with a mental health professional before they can be cleared to enter rehab.

Felony Law, the especially heinous and destructive shit that requires an entire prosecution team to handle the sheer weight of what you did either because of scale or because what you did is so heinous that it causes mental health problems for people handling the evidence (this is a real thing, the toolbox killers disgusted one investigator so much he ended up killing himself because he was unable to live with even knowing the extent of what they did). This is the level where isolation from society should be less about making a holding space in which a person is given the tools and expectations to do better for themselves, and more about keeping this clear grave danger to society writ large quarantined from potential victims. If they seem to redeem themselves, great, they can keep being redeemed in their padded cell.