Allow me to suggest that the common belief that the correct response to crime is punishment… is exactly what generated the Trayvon Martin tragedy in the first place.

Justice is not and cannot be punishment. Justice is (something like) positively affecting (and thus resolving) the causes of crime and wrongdoing, so that they -stop happening-.

Pretending that punishing someone (and making others ideologically and financially complicit in this process) is equivalent to justice is -a disease-. It has -the opposite effect- and has -nothing to do with justice-. It is simply a sick form of vengeance, masquerading as justice. Justice resolves crime by eliminating it at the source… which tends to be ideological and cultural — not by attacking the perpetrators, which has the effect of turning us all into perpetrators… and pretending we are ‘good’ for desiring and participating in this. Fail.