- Rehabilitation is the idea of ‘curing’ an offender of their criminal behaviour, of changing their habits, their outlook and even personality, so as to make them less inclined to commit crimes in the future. It seeks to prevent a person from reoffending by taking away the desire to offend. This is very different from the idea of deterrence (the idea of making him afraid to offend, though he may still desire to), and the idea of incapacitation (which is the idea of taking away his physical power to offend).

- Retribution is the idea that punishment should be determined chiefly by the seriousness of the crime itself, and not by consequentialist factors, such as whether the punishment is enough to deter the rest of society. It is a very serious mistake to think that the retributive ideal in the criminal justice system is about vengeance, retaliation or payback. Rather, it is an extremely sophisticated idea that often forms the basis of, and arguably is even the leading indication of, a developed sentencing system.

- The debate between rehabilitation and ‘retribution’ involves two broad questions: ideologically, which is the more satisfactory justification for punishment; and practically, which can serve as a more useful guide for sentencers and other agents in the criminal justice system?

- I could have gone into more detail here, obviously. Are there some people that just can't be rehabilitated? Are jail sentences too harsh? Too lenient? Does jail make an offender worse? Should the death penalty exist for repeat/serious offenders?

Discuss :)

IMO. Both should be used accordingly.
One method may just work better for some than others.
And you could use both.
It really depends on who you're treating. Which is actually the tricky part. In determining what to use.

The real question is "what do you want to achieve in a criminal justice system?"

I think the primary desire of most people is a system that protects everyone from physical harm and sexual abuse, followed closely by protection of people’s property, and far down the list is punishing people for their acts; and in most cases I suspect that the punishment is desired as a deterrent to promote the first two considerations and not as punishment for the sake of punishment.

With this in mind, the criminal justice system has to be flexible to address the issues of particular criminals to be highly effective.

A large portion of crimes are committed by individuals who are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or as a way to get the money to fund their addiction; if you treat the underlying drug and addiction problems the crime that comes from that will disappear. There are multiple ways you could approach this, and the most effective way would be preventative measures that discourage/limit hard drug use and alcohol abuse, but I don’t think that punishment is an effective strategy in these cases.

At the same time there are a lot of people who make rational (or irrational) decisions that lead them to commit crimes. A mixture of retribution to deter these people from making these choices and rehabilitation to ensure that they have the option to make better choices will be highly effective.

Finally, we have people who have a compulsion to commit crimes and are unlikely to be rehabilitated or deterred regardless of what we do. These individuals will almost certainly offend as soon as they can, and there will be a pattern of escalation in their crimes. There really are only a couple of options on how to deal with these people, to lock them up in prison for as long as can be justified or to kill them; because they are a threat to countless people every moment they’re free.

What is this? First you describe retribution as being a form of vengeance and then all of a sudden you say that retribution isn't about vengeance.

Rehab for addiction.

Stuff like violent crimes, murder, rape, etc. is 100% retribution. Put that shithead in prison so he can be raped many times and learn his lesson. Sick fucks like these aren't gonna change, they just need to be punished.

But stuff like drug crimes, petty theft, and other non-violent crimes rehabilitation is a possibility.

Then there are certain people who just committed "crimes of passion" or whatever who committed their crime in the heat of the moment and aren't usually violent people...just punish them a bit and let them off easier than the sick fucks. These sorts of people aren't the ones that will be repeat offenders, maybe they just need anger-management classes or some shit. 

IMO, we need capital punishment for those and then send the bullet bill to the family.