I’m trying to get through season five of Arrow as quickly as possible before the new season starts up. One thing that got me thinking early on was when John Diggle was set up and put into military prison. At first, he tells his wife to stop fighting for him and resists when Oliver comes to break him out. The reason is fascinating to me: he thinks he deserves to be punished for killing his brother Andy last season. That is, he’ll accept punishment for a crime he didn’t commit to atone for one he did.

Part of me had a lot of trouble with this decision. Diggle has a daughter and a wife he’ll leave behind if he stays in prison. And he’s a crucial part of the team that keeps Starling City from being completely overrun by various villains. What a selfish way to live, I thought. Putting his need for moral balance ahead of the needs of everyone else in his life. Before I could judge too harshly, though, I began to realize that so many of us act the same way every day in less extreme cases. Like Diggle, we refuse to accept love from others because we’ve done something in the past that makes us unworthy of it. So as much as I disliked Diggle’s decision, I understood it.

In fact, it was so obvious that Diggle deserved punishment that Oliver told him that, yes, you need to make up for what you did, but the way to do it is to come back to Starling and protect the city. And I think there’s some good food for thought. All of us make mistakes, sometimes even horrible ones. The way to make up for them is not to stop living, but to live our lives for a high calling.

That got me thinking about how we punish as a society. Many of us think about criminal punishment as ensuring that the criminal repays their debt to society. And sure enough, every person we put in prison who has committed a crime might deserve to be there on some level. But by separating them from their loved ones and communities, we may inflict the same consequences on bystanders that Diggle was ready to inflict on his family. What about their families, and their friends, and their jobs? By keeping them locked up because they owe society a debt, we may end up stopping them from living lives to pay it.

Of course, some people are too dangerous to be left free. Is that true of Diggle? He’s a murderer after all. And yet I think the screenwriters mean for us to see him as a hero. A fallen hero, yes, but a hero all the same at the end of the day. The question this poses is never stated directly on the show, but I think it’s there all the same. If a man who killed his own brother is capable of redemption, what about the many other criminals locked up for lesser crimes?