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Let's get into it:
In Star Trek, there's this concept of the Prime Directive, where the Federation (that's the US and the extension into the future of Western Civilization) has this rule where they can't interfere with civilizations that are not as advanced as they are. The metric for this is whether or not that civilization has achieved warp capability and can travel through space at light speed. In other words, the Prime Directive says global superpowers can only play with other global superpowers and can't get involved in the petty affairs of inferior civilizations.
Okay, seems fair. After all, what chance does some kind of agrarian pseudo-medieval culture have against those who roam the stars in the USS Enterprise? The Federation citizens of Earth have evolved to such an extent that they have cast off God and religion, have devoted themselves to exploration and scientific inquiry, and are so in control of their emotions that they are governed by reason, logic, and rational thought. Sure, pesky emotions sometimes rear their ugly heads, lust, avarice, gluttony, but they are quickly tamped down for the good of the individual and for civilization.
Still, this Prime Directive precaution doesn't prevent the Federation explorers, from Kirk onward, from coming into contact with primitive beings and cultures. Often these cultures are defined by their barbarism, their religious fervor, their tribalism. Even some species that have attained warp have these problems plaguing their societies, but they are foreign problems to a Federation that has left all this in its distant past.
So how does the Federation handle it? When they encounter a primitive, tribalist culture, the Federation looks down upon them from the vantage point of a great many centuries of progress. They can hardly understand their primal ways and often feel bad for them. However, they are guided by the Prime Directive, which prohibits interference. That means if they encounter a culture that belittles and beats their women, deprives those women of education, and forces them into domestic servitude, or cultures that practice tribal conflicts along religious grounds, murdering each other over religious differences, or worship Gods that demand horrific sacrifices, the Federation may not interfere.
This Prime Directive is what I always think of when I see cases such as one that popped up in England. A judge let a boy off with no prison time after he stabbed a girl, his classmate, 10 times with a 6-inch blade because she rejected his advances. He chased her through a shop, stabbing her along the way. Tribal. The judge called him a "bright lad," and said prison was the "last place" for a boy like himself. The 14-year-old boy also stabbed a shopkeeper. Primitive.
The judge, essentially, adheres to the Prime Directive. The judge believes himself to be above tribal conflicts, above this kind of barbarism, and barely thinks it's his place, if at all, to cast judgments on a person from what he undoubtedly sees as a lesser culture. The judge admitted that the boy has "difficulties" but imposed an ankle monitor and curfew instead of jail time anyway. The monitor fitting had to be postponed because the boy broke curfew and was nowhere to be found.
"He has a number of issues and difficulties but not of a nature or an order that means that I take the view he’s a danger," the judge said. "He's still young, and he's capable of learning." You can almost hear the judge's thoughts, that this boy isn't at the level of proper civilization so the bench can't judge him according to the standards of, you'll excuse me, Federation law, standards, and expectations.
We see this with judges in the United States, too, from their perch on the bench, armed with rationalism and reason, having tamped down their own emotions, believing themselves to be above those lesser beings who have not attained their status, who are not up to snuff on Western values, culture, norms, social diktats, and refuse to hold the barbarians among us to proper legal or social standards.
Why isn't the boy with the stabbing fetish held to account? Because, says the judge, "he's still young, and he's capable of learning." However, it is key to point out that, just as in the Federation those Federation citizens who break the rules are held to the highest accountability, so too are those Western citizens who break the law held to the highest standards of justice. A British boy, born and bred, who goes off stabbing a schoolmate is not let off, is not called a "bright lad" in open court. Instead, he is legally and morally accountable for his crimes—the judges expect more of the citizens of the West than they do those interlopers who come in, refuse to assimilate, and carry out their criminal customs publicly.
This leniency is only given to those who are from cultures that have not attained "warp drive," have not gone through social and legal changes that create equality among the sexes, eliminated tribal warfare over religions, and stopped worshiping gods that demand violence and retribution for apostasy or blasphemy. The judges and officials don't think these non-warp-capable individuals are capable of following Western law because their cultures are so backward, so they refuse to hold them to proper standards.
Progressive Western officials believe they cannot hold accountable criminal violators from lesser, third-world cultures and societies because their people have not yet reached the achievements of the West. So they let the criminals go, just as the Federation leaves denizens of lesser worlds to fight it out among themselves, the only difference is that in the West, we don't leave them to fight it out in their own nations, we insist that they fight it out in ours and take our own culture, citizens, and society down with them.
Libby