>>Actually, it isn't.
Actually it is. Jargon to delineate the magnitude of a crime/severity of punishment doesn't change the fact that they are crimes. Just as pot used to be a crime in some states until they changed the law. That's what should happen. People don't get to declare some crimes to be virtuous: if they're virtuous then you change the law before contempt for the law becomes fashionable.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
