Sentencing also takes into account the state's interest in deterring further sex crimes, retribution, public safety and rehabilitation of the offender. How individual prosecutors and judges view and rank each of those factors can help explain disparities between one sentence and another.

Individual prosecutors, as well as the judges who rotate from court to court, take different approaches to sentencing. As a result of the autonomy of each county, "from case to case, and court to court, we get significant disparities," said Sand, who has proposed to legislators that the state adopt sentencing guidelines that would establish parameters for judges' decisions.

Different crimes bring different concerns among prosecutors, which leads to different sentencing decisions, explained St. Hilaire. "All crimes have their own pecking order."

In sentencing rapists and child molesters, for example, prosecutors in St. Hilaire's office consider first public safety and "a sense of community justice." After these top considerations come rehabilitation through a sex-offender treatment program and sending a message to the community that certain behaviors won't be tolerated, a concept known as general deterrence.

By contrast, St. Hilaire said the first goal in sentencing a person convicted of heroin possession is rehabilitation.

But not every prosecutor places as high a value on general deterrence. Sand, for instance, said sex offenders are often acting on impulses or have distorted thoughts, leading him to question the deterrent value of other offenders getting tough sentences.

"The unfortunate fallacy in this notion of general deterrence is that the people coming to court are not thinking about the consequences," he said.

Nor is the desire for retribution a given in all sentencing choices. In Windsor County recently, it was not lack of evidence but rather the expressed wishes of the victim that helped determine the outcome of a sexual assault case.

Authorities had damning evidence against Stebbins, the 58-year-old Quechee man: a confession to Hartford police that he had sexually abused a girl he knew over a two-year period, court records show.

But the victim in the case told the prosecutor she did not want Stebbins to serve prison time. In addition, Stebbins had gone to the police about the crime before the police came to him, had no previous criminal convictions and had voluntarily enrolled in a community sex offender treatment program.

Those four factors left the state's attorney's office weighing "retributive need" in the sentencing equation, said prosecutor Sand. If Stebbins had been ordered to prison for the sake only of punishment, he would have been pulled out of a community treatment program in which his therapist testified he was starting to make progress.

Sand said the case illustrated a tension between retribution and pragmatism.

"Did he deserve to go to jail? Yes, this was horrible conduct," Sand said. "(But) would it have served a greater societal value in light of the other four factors?"

Ultimately, the office entered into a plea agreement that called for a suspended prison sentence of five to 10 years, which Stebbins will have to serve only if he violates conditions of his probation, which require him to regularly check in with a supervising officer, avoid contact with children and abide by other restrictions.

Prison time "is one type of punishment, but it's not the only type of punishment," Sand said. "The fact that a person's day-to-day life is radically altered by (probation) conditions is also punishment."

The complexity of individual sex-crime cases illustrates why a one-size-fits-all approach does not work, argues Sand.

The now notorious Hulett case, in which Judge Cashman handed down a 60-day minimum sentence, is a good illustration of what happens when people spar over the factors considered in sentencing, according to Vermont Law School professor Michael Mello. Though Cashman never said he did not believe in punishment, as was initially reported, he did say at the hearing, "I keep telling prosecutors, and they won't hear me, that punishment is not enough."

"I started out as a 'just deserts' sentencer. I liked it. Across the line? Pop them," Cashman said in court. "Well, then I discovered it accomplishes nothing of value. It doesn't make anything better."

Cashman initially issued the minimum 60-day sentence, he explained, because it was the only way to get Hulett quickly into a treatment program, which the judge said he needed in order to avoid repeating his crimes. At that time, the Department of Corrections was not offering treatment in prison to sex offenders who, like Hulett, were deemed a low risk of re-offending once they left prison.

The department later changed its policy to provide treatment for low-risk offenders, and Cashman extended the minimum sentence to three years, defusing the controversy.

Cashman apparently believed the goals of retribution and "specific deterrence" — that is preventing Hulett from offending again — were in direct conflict, Mello said. Given the choice between the court seeking retribution and protecting the community, Cashman opted for the latter.

In the judge's view, Mello said, "It was a zero sum game."

Mello, however, said that Cashman's was a "false dilemma," because a long prison sentence is also a way to protect the community. Retribution, he said, is an expression of "the community's legitimate outrage at especially offensive conduct."

Like the vast majority of people convicted of sex crimes, Christopher Raymond never jumped out of a dark alley and grabbed his victim's arm, never lured her into his car with promises. He was a divorced armored-car guard living with his parents. The girl came to the place he lived as part of her after-school job. They talked and appeared to be friends, though the relationship hinged on distortions. He told her "she was beautiful, and looked like a woman, not a child," the girl's mother said in Grafton Superior Court.

Raymond had problems long before he ever met the girl, his sister, Angie Raymond, said in an interview.

"Christopher was always immature for his age, and he did what he could to hold his anger and sadness inside himself throughout the school day and he saved it until he got home," Angie Raymond wrote in a letter to his probation officer. "There in the safety of family who would love him unconditionally, he tantrumed, exploded in anger and locked himself in his room in tremendous sadness."

A doctor determined after his arrest that he has mood disorders, psychotic tendencies and borderline bipolar disorder, Christopher Raymond testified. But when the crimes were committed in the spring of 2005, he said, he was on medicine only for depression.

The depression medication was not working, his lawyer, Charlie Buttrey, told the judge. Raymond was wrongly trying to "self-medicate" by using the sexual relationship with the girl to help himself, Buttrey said.

Shortly before the hearing, Raymond had written Gov. Lynch a letter noting that the crime with which he was charged — aggravated sexual assault against a child — is the one that could get a much stiffer penalty under the governor's proposal for tougher sentencing.

"(L)awmakers and justice departments don't see the big picture about being branded with this crime," Raymond wrote in the letter, a copy of which was provided to the Valley News by his sister. "They want to punish us for the rest of our lives. Why do all of us have to spend an eternity in jail too?"

The victim's mother said in court, meanwhile, that her daughter was trying to cope with the fallout of a relationship she was too young to understand. "She will have to figure out," the mother said, "why he chose to prey on her."

The girl's parents supported the plea agreement because it spared her from having to testify. But assigning a number to the amount of time they want to see Raymond locked away is impossible.