Offensive sentencing

The idea of retributive justice appears to be growing in the US, where judges are applying their imaginations to sentences which reflect the offence.

The most recent, as reported in the American Bar Association Journal, includes two 19-year-olds charged in Ohio with desecrating a statue of Jesus they stole from a church's nativity scene.

They were given the choice of a 120-day sentence or a 45-day sentence that also required them to deliver a new statue to the church while walking through the town with a donkey, carrying a sign that read 'Sorry for the jackass offense (sic)'.

They went for the shorter sentence.