Another important reason for prison is to keep the community safe, which again, wasn't needed in this specific example. In fact I would rate the three reasons for incarceration by importance as such.
Safety of the public
Rehabilitation
Punishment
Of course many people (most even?) swap the last two. And it shows in our systems which don't offer a lot to increase the chances of rehabilitation. As Flash said, it's highly anecdotal as it's one case, but it can probably be said that this mistake worked better for society. Putting someone in prison can make things worse, in some cases making a career criminal of them, yet giving them a second chance and responsibility can turn things around.
For this case I am of the same mind, he shouldn't need to serve any time. The biggest reason is that he does appear to be self rehabilitated. Another reason, which when it really comes down to it probably shouldn't matter, but does in a 'fairness' way which appeals to our animal/human nature is that the length of time that he was supposed to serve has already elapsed. If the example was 5 of a total 15 had elapsed before the system figured it out, I'm sure some people would still want him to serve the rest, and I'm not entirely sure I would not be part of that group.
And of course, for a extremely violent crime, I have no idea where I would stand.
But luckily this doesn't appear to happen very often at all, so looking at it at a case by case basis is possible. And in this case, I don't believe he needs to serve any time.
For the larger discussion of punishment v rehabilitation, it's very natural for people to want to see bad people being punished. To 'even out' things as much as possible and make things 'fair'. It's been shown that our sense of fairness and desire for it is in our very makeup, it's part of our genes, an evolutionary trait.
However, life isn't fair, we all know that. And a justice system that focuses on punishment above all else, is always going to be less successful and more expensive. It creates more criminals and in turn makes the very society we are trying to keep safe more dangerous. Not to mention that it costs more money to jail people than to have them live their own life.
If the ultimate goal of a justice system is to keep people as safe as possible, wouldn't we go with what works, no matter if it doesn't seem 'fair'?
It's hard to forgive those who wrong you, and natural to want to see them suffer. But in a lot of cases it works out better for everyone. The victim, the criminal, and society. The more a justice system can reflect that, more successful it will be and the safer that society will be.
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