Newspapers reported statements by an appellate prosecutor who criticized the legislature for allowing the conversion of prison sentences of up to five years into monetary penalties. He attributed this and similar rules, in large part, to academics who also practice law and therefore, according to him, act in favor of their clients.

Certain prominent commentators praised both the statements and the prosecutor himself in articles published in daily Athens newspapers.

The question arises, however: does the prosecutor seriously maintain that everyone sentenced to imprisonment should actually be confined in prison? If he supports imprisonment for all persons sentenced to prison terms, he ignores that prisons do not fulfill their mission. They do not even approach the purpose for which they were created and maintained, because they often function not as correctional institutions but as warehouses of pain, humiliation and human degradation, and as universities of crime.

For that reason, the legislature was right to allow conversion of prison sentences, so that not every person who violated the law, or had the misfortune to become involved in a prosecution ending in conviction, is imprisoned. A conviction is not always the product of correct judicial judgment.

There should be dialogue and an exchange of views. Academics, or at least some of them, should be asked why their silence accepts a prosecutorial position that does not recognize good faith, ideological conviction or scientific motives, but sees self-interest as their only motive.

There should be an immediate and appropriate answer to the specific prosecutor, including the reminder that many academics do not practice law and have no reason not to serve science, humanity, reason and, above all, ethics.

Most importantly, there must again be discussion of the purpose of punishment. Modern criminological research should be taken into account, especially the view that punishment by itself does not restrain criminality. The fact that prisons often operate as postgraduate schools of crime must also be taken seriously.