Karma and the Statute of Limitations

 It's intuitively obvious that after some point, it's too late to punish a crime. 

 When Karma has to punish a criminal, it charges extra for the service. After a crime has already been committed, the point of a human justice system is to avoid this surcharge. If the debt is paid and the scales are balanced before it's called due, interest charges are minimized. Going without Judges and judgments is possible, but it's simply more expensive. Respond to someone shoving the physical away from the spiritual by shoving the physical back toward the spiritual.
 However, Karma keeps its own schedule. Mortal justice must be swift. If you ask Karma to be patient, it will if anything move the schedule up, and also will beat you black and blue for the ungrateful and irresponsible insolence. At some point Karma has already balanced the scales and charged the surcharge. At this point, human justice is nothing but a superfluous expense. If it is not swift and decisive, if it doesn't follow Machiavelli's dictum, it is not justice. A fortiori: rather than merely superfluous, it is yet another karmic debt that has to be paid. Karma has already taken the crime out of the criminal's hide - why is some disgusting mortal trying to usurp its authority and responsibility? 

 Why? Because it's exactly what it looks like, cue midwit meme: a futile Satanic usurpation attempt. There's also a surcharge for making unnecessary work.

 Sociologically, the point of justice is to avoid the need for punishment. You want to build a society that doesn't run up karmic debts in the first place. Crime shouldn't be punished, crime can't be permitted at all. The conditions where crime is even possible are themselves crimes, running up tabs with god.
 Stand well back from any society where criminals can seemingly get away with it.... Standing too close typically constitutes support, and Karma will not fail to notice your complicity. Well back: Lot's wife was still close enough to Sodom to look back, lament its punishment, and pay the resulting debt.
 While Karma is relatively quick to pounce on individual criminals, it seems actively sadistic when it comes to society at large. It prefers to let you run up the tab as far as possible, maximizing the karmic harvest. It will let your false society live longer precisely to make its fall that much more agonizing and total. 

 

 Come to think, that makes sense. Karma waits long enough that it does not provide discipline for free. Receiving free discipline would run up a karmic debt. The average criminal is punished quickly because they have short memories & low IQs and can't connect action to consequence. Karma is hardly going to run up a debt with itself by destroying society that hasn't yet run up eschatonic levels of debt. However, societies punished with anything less than annihilation might learn to do better. That is, they might get a lesson without paying for it, which would cause a karmic debt, which would result in a lesson, which would cause a karmic debt...
 Either way, the unjust society is destroyed. The cliff isn't littered with spiritual warning signs because Karma chooses to take the slow path, rather than the quick one. Say thanks. 

 Or don't. See how that works out for you.