[zanny]

The more we learn about human psychology the harder it is to take a criminal and say "this is a bad person who is wholly responsible for their behavior and deserves what they get".

For a vast, huge majority of victims of crime by far and way the most valuable thing to them is not retribution or vindication, it is their own attempt to regain safety. The knowledge their assailant is no longer able to hurt others is so much more substantial on average to victims than the knowledge their assailant is suffering or dead.

Retribution is a tart feeling. Its empty. It gives you a moment of animal hormone rush before you realize it isn't gaining anyone anything. Its just part of being angry.

Yes, of course if you were involved in a crime, or someone you loved, you would want retribution. We all would feel that way. Our brains are wired too strongly to react in that manner. Its a survival instinct, one of those deeply rooted behaviors you cannot undo like the gag or drowning reflexes. That is why it is so valuable that those of us not under its influence recognize it doesn't serve a practical purpose in civilized society. You retaliate to save your life from an immediate threat, and you use that instinctual bloodlust to insure the threat is neutralized. You don't channel it to use state institutions to harm people long term to appease your animal brain in the same way you don't guzzle cheese wiz all the time because your brain keeps telling you to eat so long as food is available. We have that instinct, both to eat endlessly and be sedentary and to seek retribution. Neither are rational, and both require discipline to restrain, not glorify.