As reasonable as it might seem to make rules to react to recent problems, this is one of the things governments tend to do ... and it nearly always goes wrong! To pick an extreme case to illustrate the point: In Great Britain some years back, two nine-year-old boys murdered a baby. Until then, children couldn't be tried in an adult court, but the law was changed just to satisfy expected public reaction to the limited sentencing powers of a juvenile court for that one case. It's like saying well, the law says children aren't held as responsible for their actions as adults, but we're going to throw these two to the wolves in the interests of politics.

In other words, good lawmaking should be based on the longer run rather than being tempted by a single instance.

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