By I've got two thoughts on Green Lantern 8. One, the story was incredibly lame. Two, the artwork by Carlos Pacheco was incredible, especially this double page spread...
Cowabunga! All of my favorite Corps members from the 80s, ripe for my Windows desktop (double click the pic to get a super-sized view). Pacheco amazes me with his love for 70s and 80s superheroes, which he read over in Spain. He can make any story great with his awesome pencilling power. However...
...this story is just pure leftovers from Superman Annual 11 ("For The Man Who Has Everything") by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. In this rehash, Green Lantern and Green Arrow team up to fight Mongul, and get waylaid by his Black Mercy parasite plant--the one that makes them dream of a perfect, happy life before it kills them. Even though they know in advance what this fucking thing does, they still fall into the trap. Yeah, sure, it's interesting that Hal is buddies with Sinestro and that Ollie is a loyal family man with four kids. But the story has only one way to go, the same one that Alan Moore wrote: eventually the heroes wake up and butt kick Mongul. But in Moore's story, Mongul got his comeuppance, at the hands of Robin no less!
Johns is content to have Hal Jordan simply teleport Mongul back to his homeworld. What the fuck? Is this how a man without fear acts? Mongul's father destroyed Coast City and fractured Jordan's mind enough to let Parallax take over. Mongul is a mass murderer who makes all of Earth's dictators puny by comparison. Jordan has an obligation to bring this thug down. Instead, he just gets rid of him. I don't get it. Jordan's a member of an Inter-galactic police force. I can only assume that Infinite Crisis has shattered Geoff Johns' mind. Nuff said.
You bring up a really good point. If the Green Lantern Corp is a police force, just where do they incarcerate their suspects?
And is there a Green Lawyers Corp, too, to handle the prosecution of these criminals. And would there also be some sort of Galactic Defenders Corp for those criminals unable to pay for their own lawyers?