Justice for all?

A judge in the Netherlands has reduced a convicted robber's fine by the price of his pistol, citing the weapon as a 'legitimate business expense'. The judge was asked if a Ferrari was a 'legitimate business expense' for a drug dealer: apparantly not. The drug dealer, said His Honor (?), doesn't require such flash and dash merely to transport drugs: "a small truck would suffice".
This isn't a one-off. In Holland, criminals keep receipts and routinely have these amounts deducted from their fines.
How does it feel, I wonder, to be a hardworking Dutchman with his nose to the windmill, always aware the justice system considers a thief his equal, economically speaking?
Not that our justice system here in Canada is much better than that. I can't remember the last time I heard a sentence pronounced that I thought fair. You can rape somebody in Canada and get house arrest. You can kill somebody and get less than three years in jail. Not even that, if you're underage.
It's almost as if judges search for a reason to excuse crime entirely, and the reasons they come up with, quite frankly, boggle my mind. The typical reasons given tend to center around the criminal's youth, poverty, racial/ethnic background, or childhood experiences.

YOUTH

Were you ever bullied when you were a kid? I was. Even before I got glasses, I was a magnet for a certain kind of kid scum. The sociologists will tell you that bullies act that way because they're insecure, but kids will tell you otherwise. Bullies? Insecure? That's crap. Only a grownup would think that. Look at Vince over there, the pillar of the playground. The younger kids scurry from him: they'd make sacrifices to him, if they thought it would do any good. There's nobody more secure than Vince. While the rest of us try to figure out where our place is in the world, Vince doesn't need to. It's his world, after all. All eyes are on him (all the eyes that don't want to be blackened, that is). And when (not if) Vince decides it's time to punch you in the face, asking why won't get you much. Vince's answer is always "because I felt like it, asshole!" You might as well question God.
It's amazing how adults are so quick to dismiss the actions of the Vinces in their past. "He must have been afraid his mother didn't love him", they'll say, as if that revelation would make one whit of difference to any of the children Vince tormented each and every day. Most kids are afraid their parents don't love them, at some point.That youthful fear, whether founded or not, doesn't cause them to revel in causing pain
Adults tend to underestimate the intelligence of children and overestimate their innocence. Our justice system does both, which is why you hear of teenagers leaving courtrooms laughing and smirking

POVERTY

I didn't grow up poor. And if I did, for a while there, you'd have never heard it from me. I've tried to pick and choose the lessons learned from my mother, but that particular lesson wasn't so much learned as embedded: poverty is shameful. Other people could be poor, certainly. That was useful; it gave you a reason to feel superior. But us? We weren't poor. At worst, we were briefly embarrassed tycoons.
Since I left home at eighteen, I've been fairly rich and flat broke; I've met people who have been a great deal richer and a great deal more broke than I've ever been. There's no shame in either position, of course. Petty thievery can be excused by abject poverty--humans do need to eat, after all--but poverty mitigates far more than thievery in the Canadian justice system. This is an insult to everyone in that vast majority of poor who are law-abiding.

ETHNICITY

The same arguments hold here. Having striped skin doesn't make you a criminal. Sure, some stripes are criminals--so are some polka-dots. But even if there's a group of stripes out there terrorizing the community, you can't say it's due to some part of their stripey nature. The Nazis dehumanized a whole race this way.
No, being a stripe makes you no worse than anyone else. And no better, either. For a court to excuse your actions just because you're a stripe is inexcusable racism in two ways. It's racism against other stripes, for on some level it assumes they can't help being criminals. It's racism against non-stripes, because their punishments are less severe.
Unacceptable.

CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES

Were you beaten as a child? Abused in some way? I'm sure that, no matter how much the perpetrator(s) tried to assure you this was normal, that you deserved it, at some point, deeply in pain, you must have thought "no! This is wrong!" Unless your experiences have pushed you over the edge of insanity, legally speaking, you know, by definition, the difference between right and wrong. So a court shouldn't be able to lessen your sentence on the grounds of the unspeakable abuse you suffered years ago unless it also declared you insane.

I'm tired of hearing judges who seem to side with ciminals over their victims. I never thought I would hear a judge outright legitimize crime in the Dutch manner. But now, having seen it, I can't say I'm surprised.