A system becomes unjust when punishment depends more on identity than behavior.

Once the response to an action depends more on who did it than on what was done, the rules have stopped being rules and become a way of sorting people. The words on the page can remain perfectly neutral while the pattern of enforcement does all the real work. Those on the wrong side of that pattern learn it quickly; those on the right side often never see it.

Wherever you have any say in how consequences fall, look at the pattern rather than the individual cases. Who tends to get the benefit of the doubt here, and who does not. The single decision always looks defensible. The distribution is where the truth is.