"The 'mortar' that holds all the bricks of this institution together is the City of London Corporation whose leaders and officers have supported justice so well for centuries." ………..
The Old Bailey's Senior Judge, His Honour Judge Peter Beaumont QC, speaking in 2007 at the ceremony marking the hundredth anniversary of the Old Bailey courthouse .

What I find particularly nasty and inhumane about the notion of punishment is the commercial aspect to it. A law-dispensing social elite's concept of individual (rather than social) responsibility for crime gets translated into the language of fair trade: the theft of a certain amount of money carefully calibrated as equivalent to X amount of flogging, time spent in prison or whatever . The earliest Roman coins depicted Justitia sword in one hand and scales in the other.