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Unless her appeal pays off, Ramona Cunningham is going to prison. From a vengeance point of view, it makes perfect sense. From a business standpoint, though, it’s a bad deal; if she serves her seven-year term, we’ll spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $280,000 to take care of her.

Wasn’t the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium scandal all about her costing us too much in the first place?

Meanwhile, Rodney Heemstra is out walking around even though he took a man’s life and then treated the body – or the still-living victim; we’ll never know for sure – in a shockingly inhumane manner.

This is the season when we become incensed by presidential pardons. We should pay more attention to strange definitions of justice much closer to home.

It’s easy to understand the urge for retribution when a character like Cunningham comes along and scams us. No, she shouldn’t get away with it. She needs to pay for her stupid and selfish choices.

But what’s the point of locking her up? Prison is for keeping dangerous people away from the rest of us. Cunningham hasn’t shown a tendency to walk up and hit you over the head to get your money. She is just not to be trusted in a position where she has discretion over large sums of other people’s cash.

Of course, it’s possible that she could wangle another job like that – but not likely. We have bigger things to worry about.

In a justice system worthy of the name, the punishment must fit the specific crime. This decision wasn’t an attempt at rehabilitation, but a quixotic effort to “send a message” to would-be con artists.

Send them all the messages you want. We’ll never run out of people who succumb to temptation.

For her financial transgression, there should be a way to keep Cunningham hard at work, trying to make ends meet, while the state of Iowa claims a slice of every paycheck she gets.

If you’re looking for people to incarcerate, start with Heemstra.