I completely disagree. Now granted the game could have been better at informing you that the mission you are on is a criminal mission that will result in a criminal rating but other than that I have no issue with people lose days of game time for committing crimes. You can explore the prison mechanics to reduce your sentence. if you dont like that then you are SoL and have to wait it out. Does it suck? sure but you should have known that might be the consequence when you got into it with that mission.

Sofar this penal system that vastly reduced the pvp griefing and even wrangled the standard pvp to the point that I feel safe enough to play and learn the game.

Now granted we do need a more open area for people to run amok in and that is coming with pyro (un policed zone) but in a normal system what we have now works brilliantly and even though it might run some players off those are not players I care to play with anyways. This IS the direction the game is going for better or worse. This is just the first iteration though. it will get better/worse and vastly more encompassing down the road.