In my first year of law school, my criminal-law professor often mentioned that a fundamental value of the US justice system is to "punish bad acts, not bad peop

In my first year of law school, my criminal-law professor often mentioned that a fundamental value of the US justice system is to "punish bad acts, not bad people." I took my professor's statement on faith, but 30+ years later I wish I'd asked for a citation. It seems like your cop friend would have twisted the value to "use bad acts as an excuse to punish bad people." I'm sure it's easy to find plenty of Americans who think that's an excellent mission for their neighborhood police force. Which makes me sad, because it means that one's "badness" isn't defined by one's actual choices. I agree that bad people do exist. And I'm sure that prosecuted crimes are committed disproportionately by those we'd define as "bad people." But I don't think that bad acts committed by good people are any better than those committed by bad people. And I don't think that a bad person who resists committing bad acts should be treated worse than a good person who also resists committing them.