Maybe The United States' Legal System Could Learn From This

[GotZoom]

Anyone else who thinks about stealing might think about this guy and change their mind....22 months for 2 yen (2 cents)? Kind of like the Steve Martin joke about eliminating parking violations: Give them the death penalty. Would only happen a few times then no one would park illegally.

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KOBE -- A man who stole 2 yen from the offertory box at a Kobe shrine and a set of batteries from a convenience store was sentenced to 22 months in prison.

Defense lawyers for Seiji Kondo had argued that stealing only 2 yen didn't constitute a punishable crime, but the Kobe District Court dismissed their claim.

"Even 2 yen is part of the monetary offerings of shrine visitors. We cannot take what he did lightly despite the amount of money," the court's judge said when handing down the sentence on Tuesday.

Kondo, 27, an unemployed man from Kobe's Hyogo-ku, took 2 yen from the offertory box of a shrine and batteries and other items worth about 800 yen from a convenience store between June and October in 2005, the court said. (Mainichi)

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20060315p2a00m0na004000c.html

 

[Nuc]

Anyone else who thinks about stealing might think about this guy and change their mind....22 months for 2 yen (2 cents)? Kind of like the Steve Martin joke about eliminating parking violations: Give them the death penalty. Would only happen a few times then no one would park illegally.

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KOBE -- A man who stole 2 yen from the offertory box at a Kobe shrine and a set of batteries from a convenience store was sentenced to 22 months in prison.

Defense lawyers for Seiji Kondo had argued that stealing only 2 yen didn't constitute a punishable crime, but the Kobe District Court dismissed their claim.

"Even 2 yen is part of the monetary offerings of shrine visitors. We cannot take what he did lightly despite the amount of money," the court's judge said when handing down the sentence on Tuesday.

Kondo, 27, an unemployed man from Kobe's Hyogo-ku, took 2 yen from the offertory box of a shrine and batteries and other items worth about 800 yen from a convenience store between June and October in 2005, the court said. (Mainichi)

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20060315p2a00m0na004000c.html

These are the kinds of crimes that used to get people sent to Australia.

 

[Diuretic]

These are the kinds of crimes that used to get people sent to Australia.

They're not actually. People used to get transported for much more serious crimes than that. Murderers were hanged but thieves (serious ones, not the mythical stealing of a loaf of bread by a starving person), robbers, highwaymen, housebreakers and - Fenian terrorists and Canadian nationlists - were transported. Transportation was used by the British because their prisons were full and the hulks on the Thames used as prisons were also full and because the United States was no longer a British penal colony. They can to transport them somewhere so to Australia (as it was later called) they went.