We try offenders when we catch them. And we sometimes send them to prison, not for the injury done to the victims, but because they broke the law. So now we have two wounds, and not healing. The wounds multiply. Friends and neighbors of the victim, concerned for their own safety, start taking greater precautions.
Fear is also a wound.
The families of prisoners, unable to deal with the separation and stigma, begin to draw apart. The victims who are reorganizing and the prisoners who are being released discover that the community cannot accept them as victims or ex-prisoners, and they conceal that part of themselves. We must hold offenders accountable. If we do not insist that those who commit crimes be held responsible for their actions, we begin a slide into anarchy. But the offender can be held responsible in many ways.