Justice is a Myth

My own sensitivity has been somewhat dulled of late by the ongoing Anadin programme, but it has been impressed upon me that the statement read out to the court by Adele Eastman, fiancee-manque of the late Tom ap Rhys Pryce (Linklaters lawyer stabbed on the Underground), was a tour-de-force of emotional intensity - sufficient to coax a solemn tear from even the sternest, most curmudgeonly Old Bailey judge. I have two questions:

1) Why was this statement read aloud in court? With the most sincere respect for the fiancee (who I understand was invited to read her statement by the court) and her unenviable loss, would not the funeral/memorial service have better accommodated such unabashed eulogising? Does the Best Man stand and deliver his speech in the registry office?

2) (Being of a broader nature) Why is the criminal prosecution system envisaged primarily as a vessel for Justice? Justice is not where it's at. What compels society to imprison its miscreants is our disinclination to allow them to re-offend. Criminal prosecution is purely practical. We should not be meting out punishment based on some out-dated Hellenic/Judeo-Christian notion of Justice as a desirable force for balancing scales. Justice does not exist to placate the blood-thirsty proxy-victims of violent crimes (close relatives waving placards outside the court gates, etc), or - through some perverse Jacobean logic - to avenge the victims themselves. It exists to protect potential victims. That can be its only purpose in a rational society.

Altogether elsewhere, Dogtooth is angry and unsettled that people think the figure of 132 dead British servicemen killed over a period of 4 years in Iraq is a substantial one, and that gun-crime laws are set for revision after 3 fatal shootings in a city populated by over 7.5 million people. Brushing up on my gun facts and stats, I came across a website which offered macabre amusement: scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the 'incidents involving animals'.