In November 2011, the Pakistan fast bowler Mohammed Amir was led away in handcuffs and in tears. He was driven to Feltham Young Offenders Institution and shown the small, bare cell where he would spend about 20 hours a day. Food was provided at 4pm and then not until 11am the following morning. He was 19 years, alone in a foreign country.Feltham is one of Britain's most notorious juvenile prisons. It is afflicted by drug use, racism, gang warfare, endemic bullying and what a 2013 government report described as "unacceptably high levels of violence".Former guards allege that in many cases fights were arranged by staff. In 2000 a British-Asian teenager called Zahid Mubarek was bludgeoned to death by a fellow inmate in his cell. Self-harm and attempted suicides are common.story_article_left1The only reason for going into this sort of detail is that on Thursday, Amir stepped out to play a test at Lord's, the ground where he once bowled two no-balls for money, and many will take it as evidence that he has not been punished enough.It is a view expressed eloquently by batsman Kevin Pietersen this week, and by many others elsewhere. If you swindle the sport, the logic goes, then no clemency should be expected. Life bans. Zero tolerance. Pietersen's standpoint, as a direct victim of Amir's cheating, is understandable. But there is a reason why most legal systems in the world regard victim justice as no justice at all.The first problem with zero tolerance is that it leaves you with nowhere else to go.If you give the street corner drug peddler the same sentence as the millionaire kingpin, then not only is it fundamentally unjust, but you have just incentivised all the peddlers to become kingpins. This is why Amir's admission of guilt, his relative vulnerability, his cooperation with anticorruption initiatives, are all relevant.The second problem is that one life ban is not the same as another.Amir was 19 when he was sentenced. His captain Salman Butt, the ringleader of the fix, was 25. His teammate Mohammad Asif was 28.Had Amir been banned for life, it would effectively have been a harsher punishment for a lesser crime.story_article_right2There is still the issue of deterrent. But perhaps we have not quite been clear enough here: Amir went to jail. He was strip searched, locked in a cage and served his food in a tiny plastic tray.The fact that all this happened away from the public gaze does not lessen the impact on him, but perhaps it lessens the impact on us. We see Amir tearing in with abandon, scattering opposition batsmen, lauded by leaping teammates and capacity crowds. But we did not see him suffer.Zero tolerance is an emotional response to crime. It is also the easiest response. It reduces the world to simple moral absolutes. It ignores nuance and mitigation in favour of making everyone feel better.Yet, in a world increasingly rejecting evidence and logic in favour of sentiment and rhetoric, nuance is arguably more important than ever (and as an intellectual exercise, try imagining how Donald Trump might have prosecuted the Amir case).The fact that Amir is a brilliant fast bowler need not be relevant here. Cricket is at its best when it opens its doors to everybody, when it serves as a force for redemption and inclusion.- ©The Daily Telegraph, London..