Legal justice today has at least as much to do with criminals as with crimes.
- Foucault

I once wrote about a man on death row who was old, and was physically and mentally infirm, but the state wanted to execute him anyway. (He died of natural causes before that could happen.) Someone angrily wrote to me, “He still did it, so what does it matter how old or sick he is?”

But punishment is unrelated to the crime, always. This is why, as Foucault has pointed out, criminals are expected to explain th...