Basic Trope: A governing body treats all crimes the same, with equal punishments.
- Straight: Whenever anyone commits a crime against the Tropestani society — whether they're a petty thief stealing a packet of cheese from a grocery or a Serial Killer with dozens of confirmed victims — President Justice always treats them the same.
- Exaggerated:
- Whether the crime is stealing a penny from the take-a-penny, leave-a-penny tray, poking a government official in the head, jaywalking or detonating a nuclear warhead in a heavily populated area, the punishment is a Public Execution.
- President Justice punishes citizens for any crime by sentencing them to several thousand years in prison.
- In Tropestan, people suspected of crimes are immediately shot dead, regardless whether they’re innocent or not.
- An audience jeers or throws food at a performer. They aren't just called out for their behavior, they all are sent to prison where they eventually die — including the few ones who didn't engage in booing.
- Downplayed: Only very severe offenses are considered crimes in the first place (as opposed to perfectly legal personal conflicts or small-time misdemeanors warranting a fine at worst). Thus, while harsh, it isn’t utterly insane.
- Justified:
- President Justice is a Knight Templar who believes the best way to get rid of crime is to impose harsh penalties for even the smallest crimes.
- Only one kind of crime ever takes place in the city, thus only one punishment is needed.
- President Justice can kill from a distance with a thought... but he can only kill with his power, and thus his rule as a demagogue doesn't have the ability to inflict a lesser punishment.
- President Justice used to be a far kinder man, but the depths and depravity of the people around him and the world at large, their willingness to lie, cheat, and harm others for the sake of their own petty ego, and the failings of the justice system caused him to eventually snap from sheer hatred at the evil around. He thus decided that if society so desperately wanted to be criminals, then everyone would be treated as a criminal 24/7, and forced to behave. Or ELSE.
- Inverted:
- All crimes are punished with the same lenient punishment, no matter how major it is.
- Tropestan has a ridiculously tiered system of crimes, with varying punishments down to the amount of minutes spent in prison depending on the crime. For example: “You stole seventy-five thousand dollars worth of goods from a jewellery store? Twelve years, six months, fifteen days, eighteen hours, and twenty-nine minutes in prison. Oh, wait, you broke the shopkeeper’s nose? … I’m adding six hours and thirty minutes to your sentence.”
- All good deeds are equal: Whether it's raising a billion dollars for charity, working for the soup kitchen, helping an old lady across the street, holding the door open for someone behind you, or complimenting someone.
- Subverted: A man who disturbed the peace with loud music has a gun pulled out on him, and then a blank is fired next to his head.
- Double Subverted: He only recieved mercy due to being a first time offender. The officer informs him that "the next one goes into your head".
- Parodied:
- All crimes are equal and merit the same punishment… except for one minor crime like staying out too late, which is treated as much, much more heinous than the rest.
- All crimes are equal... except the maximum punishment is paying a $1 fine.
- Zig Zagged: The crime system generally prosecutes all crimes equally, but fairly. Many vigilantes offer substantial bribes to judges to add longer and more drastic sentencing to crimes, however. Corrupt judges also add weight to certain crimes over others, but generally justice is equally served.
- Averted: The crimes are treated differently.
- Enforced: “We can best demonstrate the system’s inherent evil by making them kill everyone, regardless of the crime.”
- Lampshaded: "Well, let’s see here: you’re not wearing your seat belt, so that’ll be thirty years in prison. That kid isn’t in a car seat — thirty years in prison. And you just shot someone? Thirty years in prison."
- Invoked: President Justice runs on a staunch anti-crime platform.
- Exploited: The president’s top advisor, a Magnificent Bastard who’s gunning for his job, suggests that he implement an ultra-harsh justice system so he can swoop in and take over when the inevitable backlash hits.
- Defied: “While I am concerned about crime, giving equally harsh punishments to every lawbreaker would be a bit much.”
- Discussed: “Oh come on! I jaywalked once! Why are you sending me to a firing squad for it? All crimes are not equal!”
- Conversed: “Wait, why is Stephen in jail this episode? … He jaywalked? But that’s a maximum-security prison! And his fellow inmates are all murderers? Ridiculous!”
- Implied: At the beginning of the movie, Alice and Bob, who have both just begun their respective sentences, become friends and explain that they’re respectively in jail for theft and assault. At the film’s end (it’s not specified how far into the future this is), they’re also released simultaneously.
- Deconstructed:
- Since criminals know they’ll get the exact same punishment whatever the crime, they go on a rampage, killing, raping, and looting as they see fit. President Justice just shrugs it off as a side effect of the system, which eventually leads to a massive riot, with massive loss of life for both sides.
- The insanely harsh justice system leads to a massive amount of prison overcrowding.
- While President Justice's vicious methods do seemingly bring a stop to crime, they also put innocent civilians and decent people who were already struggling under the pre-existing system in the crossfire, leading to many people being imprisoned, executed or ostracized for extremely small errors in judgment. People are too frightened to speak up at all, for fear that any word taken out of context would get them and their families exterminated. Additionally, his system ultimately turns out to be ineffective, since all it really did was drive the criminals underground where they can't be touched as easily, and manipulative people who can play the system to their favor end up ingratiating themselves into President Justices' circle, granting the most vile people even more power and control than before. In the end, for all of his good intentions, his actions have only made things even worse.
- And President Justice's response to the revelation of the above is to decide that humanity is beyond redemption, and decides to exterminate all of humanity to ensure that true peace can be achieved.
- Reconstructed:
- …However, this leads to a takeover by a successor who institutes a fairer and more just system. Consisting of two tiers!
- All crimes are created equal, but good behavior allows you to run the prison.
- Played for Laughs: All crimes are punishable by a lengthy prison term except for telling bad jokes, which gets you fined.
- Played for Drama: Jake only did something frowned upon in polite society, hardly illegal, but he gets sent to prison anyway, where he is put into close proximity with genuine criminals. He Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook, indeed.
I don't care if you've made a minor spelling mistake, nattered a bit, got into a few edit wars, or went out of your way to have your friends raid and spam obscenities all over the page; All Crimes Are Equal, and you're getting IP banned.
