Criminal justice in the western world is substantially based on the (faulty) premise of retributive punishment. Not rehabilitation, not harm reduction, vengeance. That has a ton of negative consequences. It means that prisons are horrid and destroy people rather than building them back up to a state worthy of re-entering civilized society. It means that the police are encouraged to dispense street justice extra-judicially (even up to executions) because it is part and parcel of the spectrum of "hurting the bad guys". It means that addicts are punished and harmed by the system for the sin of being vulnerable and falling victim to a common "vice". It's not about science, it's about feeling what is "right" and "just". Bit by bit we've occasionally made some improvements and injected some humanity into this brutally inhumane process, but we're still scraping by at medieval levels of justice. In the US more than 95% of executions by the criminal justice system happen on the street without a trial. And, of course, addiction is treated as a crime instead of a public health concern, to the detriment of all.