Quote Originally Posted by G13
Someone like the Joker is more easily incarcerated than someone like Ra's Al Ghul, who could buy his way out or have his friends put in a good word for him.
Yeah, the Joker is easily incarcerated in, for example, a police department's cell surrounded by armed guards. He would never be able to hatch an elaborate plan to escape involving hiding a bomb in a fat guy's stomach that could be triggered with a phone call.

The Joker fed Harvey some bulltrout about not being a "schemer," but he concocted some very convoluted plans to terrify Gotham and bring out Batman. I don't buy that Ra's needed to be killed but the Joker didn't. Though as I said earlier, I could at least accept the argument that Batman didn't want to directly kill the Joker, but was fine with letting Ra's crash.