"Responses to Urq's question are typically dull or timid...Forget the law, we can always change it. Much more interesting is the moral question: is it right for society to punish those whose victims have forgiven them?"

I'd like to take issue with that, at least with "timid". I suggest that my response to Urq at least touches that question. It could certainly be a place for you to start a counter-argument; I offered a couple of reasons why society might have interest beyond the victim's claim.

I agree that discussion could be taken much farther, and could be interesting, depending on who was responding--I don't have the time today to go any farther on this one. (Means I'd have to spend more time making my response coherent than I have available).

Prison is obviously wasteful. It imposes suffering without any corresponding material gain to anyone. It is not at all clear why buying out jail time should be disallowed (except in cases with incapacitation benefits, e.g. serial killers).

Haven't you answered your own question? Prison offers incapacitation benefits for most crimes; certainly any (robbery, rape) with significant rates of recidivism. But the statement "prison is obviously wasteful" is way too general. Suppose you said that most robbery was related to drug addiction (possibly true) and that it made more sense to offer treatment. A counter is that treatment is mostly ineffective, and often is more likely to be effective after a prison sentence than before, along with the observation that treatment and imprisonment aren't mutually exclusive. But a robber isn't robbing anyone while he's incarcerated.