A proper criminal justice system exacts justice - that is, punishes criminals for their crimes. Rehabilitation and deterrence are worthy goals, but they are secondary to retribution.

When punishment alone isn't enough

There's something intuitively satisfying about the idea of pure justice—that wrongdoing should be met with proportional punishment, full stop. It feels like moral balance, like the scales righting themselves. Most of us have felt the gut-level pull of retribution when we've been wronged: the person who cut us off in traffic, the colleague who took credit for our work, the friend who broke a promise. We want them to feel it.

But here's where this gets tricky in real life. If punishment is truly the only measure, we end up cycling through the same problems. Someone serves their time and comes out unchanged—angrier, more connected to criminals, less employable—and commits another crime. The victim's family still grieves. Society still pays. Nobody actually got what they wanted. Retribution feels cleaner in theory because it sidesteps the messier work of asking: what actually stops people from doing this again? What prevents the next victim?

The real tension isn't about choosing between justice and rehabilitation—it's that punishment alone doesn't deliver the security or closure retribution promises. A system that only looks backward (what did you deserve?) instead of forward (how do we prevent this next time?) might satisfy our sense of fairness in the moment, but leaves the harder problem completely unsolved.