It is just the truth, arriving slowly, with no one to blame.

That, I decided, was the more necessary punishment.

And necessity, my grandfather had taught me, was the only good reason to use power at all.

People sometimes ask me whether I regret not sending them to prison, whether the softer outcome felt like letting them off.

It did not, and does not.

Because I have watched, over the years since, what the un-dramatic version of consequences actually does to a person, and it is more thorough than any cell.