[DVaut1]

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The principle is exactly the same, and Im pretty sure you know it too.

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Huh? Now I don't even know what we are talking about anymore. I certainly don't think criminal punishment is about revenge, that is a principle most civilized societies left behind hundreds of years ago. Though I'm sure many get their kicks out of believing it is and like it.

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What's wrong with revenge exactly? Not that I think the criminal justice system should be about "revenge" entirely, but ask yourself what "justice" means in this case...

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I don't think retributive justice (crudely referred to as 'revenge' here) is necessarily something to scoff at. I'm happy when people who do bad things are punished, and I suspect most other people are too. Imagine a hypothetical world where we could find some terrible criminal monster like Dennis Rader and give him some kind of ankle bracelet that we could know, with 100% certainty, would prevent him from killing again. Let's say we've also concluded, somehow, that Rader is 100% un-rehabilitatable. And by some magic, we've also managed to conclude that it's completely impossible someone will ever repeat his crimes. Given this, should we allow him to live a free and unencumbered life, sans punishment, despite the fact that he's caused so much pain, suffering, and misery in his community? Our hypothetical has magically addressed the concerns about deterrence and rehabilitation -- but I many people would be comfortable letting Rader go free in such a hypothetical. And I think the answer is clear as to why most people wouldn't be comfortable, and it's because I think a 'just' society would necessarily have to punish someone like Rader, justified by the simple notion that he deserves it. And I would be surprised if many people would disagree with this.

That isn't to say I approve of severe forms of physical punishment, but I'm a firm believer that getting what's 'deserved' is part (and probably only a part) of achieving justice. Having said that, I think especially important for a moral society to try to balance desert with fairness. For example, I may think a rapist deserves to sit in prison for 10 years for their crime, but if we've only been punishing other rapists to 1 year in prison, we should probably take that into consideration. There are other factors to take into consideration as well. But I think desert is one of those factors we should take into consideration, and I think we can defend retributive justice once we accept the Rader-type hypothetical and the concept of just desert.