[Ramrod]

Originally Posted by Graham

Because "punishment" on its own, in and of itself, does little to prevent or discourage re-offending. Education and rehabilitation have a better chance of achieving this IMO.

So what is your problem with this:

Society not only has the right to punish culpable offenders; the moral responsibility of the offender imposes on society the duty to punish.

Thatâ₠¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s it. Nothing about rehabilitation, remorse or socioeconomic disadvantage. Nothing about the bad effects that the punishment might have on the offender or, for that matter, its good effects. The purpose of a sentence is punishment. When a system fails to punish culpable offenders, it has failed, full stop. It is unjust.

Before rejecting retributive justice out of hand as far too harsh, you should realise that you can be a retributivist and still be against disproportionate punishments. You can oppose the death penalty, for example, or think that the appropriate punishment for painting graffiti on a park bench is not a jail term, but being forced to scrub graffiti from 10 park benches.

Being a retributivist does not mean you must give up on rehabilitation. Add all the educational and therapeutic services you want to the sentence, as long as the sentence itself constitutes a punishment.
You can be a retributivist and still be a civil libertarian of sorts. A just system requires that culpability be judged correctly, which means that criminal justice procedures should protect the innocent.