Wherever this has been put into practice there is always trouble differentiating between who is a subhuman thug and who gave personal affront to a policeman or soldier.
A bloke I worked with gave an account of an event in Cyprus in the 80s. In Cyprus Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot soldiers face off across very narrow dividing lines. Sometimes the distance between them is so narrow that Australian's had to convince each to give up territory so they could drive an APC between the sandbagged positions.
The bloke telling the story was serving on the front line, monitoring one of these positions. As he watched one of the Turks came forward, dropped his trousers and bared his backside at the Greek position. Quick as a flash one of the Greek Cypriot soldiers fired a shot, striking the Turk in the anus as he was bending over and killing him instantly.
The bloke immediately questioned the soldier about killing the Turk for such a trivial reason. The reply was "Oh, it wasn't just for that. We used to live in the same village when we were growing up. He used to beat me up at school. I've been waiting years for the opportunity to get the bastard back for that."
We really don't want to give our police and soldiers the chance to avenge personal vendettas with a rest sentence in addition to other problems in a societal breakdown.
So long as we try to ensure taking life is an absolute last resort and imposing severe penalties on those who do it without very good reasons we have an insurance policy against anarchy. It lets us rebuild a normal society if anything bad happens to our current one.
East Timor doesn't have that insurance. Hence even when something minor breaks in their society the whole structure is in grave danger.
-- DM personal opinion only
