Quote: Why do we punish? If there is no other purpose to it, the only reasons we could come up with are "justice" and acting as a deterrent.
The deterrence part is horseshit. No one commits a crime in the first place in the expectation of being caught therefore any hardened criminal is out of the mix there. Someone who snaps and reacts with violence is a whole other story but the thought of prison is not going to enter your mind when you decide for whatever reason to beat the shit out of someone.
One cannot dismiss the possibility that we punish because we are still essentially barbarians.
