> Burglary is punished so severely because, like you said, the end result can be much worse than just stealing property.

Also you:

> We don't punish some future consequences. We punish dangerous and harmful behavior.

Please help me make these two statements make sense together. In this case, the severe penalty is only justifiable with a view of what might happen or what might have happened (that he might steal again, that he might become violent in future thefts, that he might have hurt those men). Now to the first might, I'll grant it's actually pretty likely. But to the second might, it's hardly clear, every summary I found suggested none of the past thefts or youthful cocaine charge (possession? couldn't find specifics) were violent. And the third might is the justification you offered in the earlier post. Which means, what, punish people for how bad their crimes could have been rather than how bad they actually were? I was in a car accident (my fault, rear ended a guy), it could have resulted in a fatality had it been at higher speeds (we were, at most, moving 10mph), should I be treated as if I had committed vehicular manslaughter?

What might happen in a crime ought to be irrelevant, what did happen is the important part. And again, in this case it appears that violence didn't enter into the equation. Might the victims have felt there could have been violence? Sure, but fear of violence (in this case he didn't even threaten violence, he came up with a lame story and ran off) is not the same as being the victim of violence.