When something slips though the cracks of government, taken for granted until we learn that it wasn’t, there are calls to regulate it. We must fix it. Something must be done. And so things get regulated, whether it’s some requirement to take thousands of hours of classes to get a license to braid hair, or refusal to give a job to someone who risked their lives bravely fighting California wildfires because they were in prison at the time.

Once we regulate, we must enforce the regulations, for unenforced regulations are worthless. And to enforce our regulations, there must be punishment for a violation of them. There must be, and since our regulations are critical to the maintenance of society, the punishment must “send a message.” And if we try hard enough to achieve a well-regulated society, we could end up like Greece.

An initial court ruling two years ago handed the woman a 15-year prison term for defrauding the public; the sentence was reduced this month, and she has been in Thiva prison in central Greece ever since.

The unidentified cleaner had worked at a state kindergarten in Volos, in central Greece, for 18 years, until a review in 2014 revealed that she had doctored a certificate to show she had completed six years of primary education (roughly elementary level) instead of only five. Six years is the required term for primary school students to complete their education.

Apparently, this cleaner, yes, cleaner, did a swell enough job for 18 years. She worked in a “state kindergarten,” because in Greece, the state provides for the welfare of all the little darlings, and must protect the cleanliness of their educational sphere by only allowing cleaners with at least six, not five, years of education.

This cleaner? A fraud. A charlatan. A liar and a cheat on society. Not because she didn’t clean. Not because she didn’t clean well enough to hold the job for 18 years. But because she gained the job of cleaner by misrepresentation.

“She went to get a job to support her two children, with a sick husband. She had to find work,” he said, adding that the woman’s spouse is disabled.

While this may provide an excuse to the empathetic, so what? There are rules, and if rules are violated, there must be consequences. Even if she had no children and a perfectly healthy husband, would it matter that the job was for a cleaner, that she successfully performed the job for 18 years? She lied and lying to the state cannot be countenanced or everybody will lie to the state to get the desirable kindergarten cleaning job.

Notably, the sentence originally imposed for this fraud upon society was 15 years, but it was reduced to ten on appeal. Now, there are some who question whether that sentence is still too severe.

An online petition for her release had drawn more than 20,000 signatures by Friday afternoon.

Heck, a petition here condemning Laura Loomer’s tires could get ten times that number in an hour. But this is Greece, so perhaps the 20,000 reflects a sufficiently severe backlash that the Times calls it “a case of educational fraud that has roiled the country and united political parties, labor unions and rights groups.”

The case triggered such a storm on Greek social media that a prosecutor, Xeni Dimitriou, decided to review the sentence. A court in central Greece is to rule on her request for release on Wednesday, pending the Supreme Court’s review in the coming days.

As people become increasingly determined to create and impose rules to cover every behavior they deem, at least under the set of circumstances that gives rise to their anguished cries, an affront to their vision of a decent society, and often look to the experience of other countries to argue that if they do it, we should too.

So which is it, ten or 15 years for a kindergarten cleaner who lied about her elementary school degree? And what if she resists when the armed police come to arrest her for this heinous fraud against society, posing a potential threat to their safety? After all, we must save the children.