A certain Dr. Goffman wrote a 2014 book about hanging out with young ghetto criminals. I'm on a discussion list that's been talking about a major crime she confesses to in the book. SOmeone asked what the appropriate penalty would be. She's case 1 below. Wouldn't sentencing guidelines treat these two cases equally–
1. A nice anthropologist lady talks with some young men about how they should kill the murderer of their friend, and drives them around looking for the friend for a long time,but they don't know where he is and were unlikely to find him anyway, and she's shown no sign in her life of being willing to help kill someone without flinching and turning the car around at the last minute.
2. A professional hit man (though never convicted) is hired by some sadists to tell them how to catch a child and kill him. He drives them to where the child walks to school each day, but the child is sick that day, so nothing happens.
There are good reasons for having sentencing guidelines, but as is a commonplace, the guidelines move all the discretion to the prosecutor. So in case 1, the prosecutor might well think the lady should do some community service and have her criminality on record, but if he can't plead it down to the an offence that gives that penalty, he'll just not prosecute— and shouldn't, either, given the constraints. And that's not just a matter of trying to be just— if he goes after her for conspiracy and attempt and a 5-30 year sentence (I'm guessing at the length), it will consume a lot of the office's resources for very little (or negative— this is revenge for murder, remember) reduction in future crime.