Victimless crimes shouldn't entail jail / The Australian, 14 January 2008
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23046292-7583,00.html
Alan Gold
"WHO can forget the leonine grace and physical beauty of American athlete Marion Jones winning five gold medals in the 2000 Sydney Olympics? Eight years on, a sadly diminished Jones will serve six months' incarceration for lying to authorities about her use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs during our Olympics. The six months, though, is only a small part of her sentence. Quite as punishing has been her exposure before the world's media, an admission to her family and her fans that she's a liar and a cheat; being stripped of her medals; and the expurgation of her name from the record books. Her use of drugs and the lies she told to avoid punishment have ruined any future to which she might have looked forward. Which begs the question, what additional value is there in locking her up in prison when she is already serving a sentence of humiliation witnessed by people across the world?"