My objection is not just to the entitled hypocrisy, but also to giving leniency to young vandals with little self-awareness or understanding of how the world works. I see it as a failure of earlier education rather than something to be forgiven.

Yeah, OK, but let's just say some young person - privileged or otherwise - chooses to scrawl "Corporate Deathburgers" across a fast-food outlet. Nobody's saying they shouldn't be punished for it.

What I think the author is asking is, should that incident then follow them around forever and ruin the rest of their life? I'd say, no, it shouldn't. But nowadays there's a significantly higher than, say, 20 years ago chance that it might.

Justice, even retributive justice, demands that the punishment must fit the crime. Yet what we see nowadays is wildly disproportionate: Justine Sacco's life was completely ruined because she cracked a moderately poor taste joke on the internet. The response and consequences of this were entirely ridiculous, over the top, and unnecessary, and it's taken years for her to reconstruct a relatively normal life. I don't think that's OK. I think the author is suggesting he doesn't think it is either.