I don't believe in revenge as punishment

I agree completely, and it's disappointing to me how so many people on your previous thread about this topic (and one in this thread already) completely misunderstood your point.

Your point is that justice should be utilitarian, not aggressive for the sake of it. It's not complicated, and I don't many people could reasonably disagree with it.

I can't say I completely agree with you, except as far as thinking the current system is lousy.

You're kind of mixing up different concepts. As I see it, a justice system serves (or can serve) three main purposes:

1. Scare people into obeying the law (deterrence). They may want to punch that guy/take that stereo/sex that girl but they know they will suffer bad consequences if caught, so they don't.

2. Make things right for the victim/survivors. In the US this is mostly addressed by civil rather than criminal law. Although, it could be argued that revenge comes under this category, albeit in a very inexact and primal sort of way. If you hurt me somehow, I might feel better knowing you will suffer for it.

3. Protect society from known dangerous individuals. Either by reforming them, confining them, killing them or exiling them. This is useful, but not the whole picture.

And it seems you're only thinking about #3.

Your view is a typical one. However, the most typical views are often the most fatally wrong.

First off, you must ask the question of "why". Why do people engage in violent behaviors? A current favorite is that the person is mentally insane. This is a shallow view, because it only explains *how* people are willing to kill, but not the *why*. People are rendered insane via systematic abuse. Notice, I use the word "systematic" for a reason. If I hit you, that is an *isolated* case of abuse. However, if I were to hit you five times a day, everyday, then it would be considered *systematic*. It is also important to note that nobody is born wanting to kill, killing is an example of a learned behavior. "Well I was abused everyday and nothing happened to me." People have different ways of expressing trauma, some engage in self-destructive behavior and others in externally destructive behavior and others try to fill the void with myths, lies, and consumerism. Also, systematic abuse during childhood is much more effective (for lack of a better word) than during adulthood because children are more sensitive to trauma.

All this in mind, people who are systematically abused during childhood are incredibly likely to go out and kill as a reflection of their own trauma. People who are abused enjoy the abuse of others because it comforts them to see others suffer as they have suffered, and also to showcase to the world how cruelly they were treated, how it all pushed them off the edge. In this way, people who kill are messengers of hate and trauma. This is how they
communicate and respond to a world that has systematically abused them from an early, impressionable age.

So now we know the why, but how do we stop this? I mean, killing isn't such a pleasant thing to have happen in the world. Well, killing them is not going to do anything. Most criminologists agree that the death penalty does nothing to lower homicide rates. The key to understanding how to stop this from happening is to understand the forces and traumas that start this cycle of trauma and hate in the first place. There are four main insane structures of society. Those are: Government, Church, School, and Family. They all play a part in ensuring that every child will view himself as a worthless piece of owned property. It spreads, en masse, insanity and hate. Every person living under a society has been affected by this. This is why people enjoy "kinky" fetishes, violence (violent TV and video games are not causes, rather they are effects), drinking, drug use, self-hate and betrayal, and many, many more. Those who kill, were victims of even greater abuse and understand that they did not deserve what happened to them (whereas people who abuse themselves don't), and take revenge from society by killing. The only way to stop this is to dismantle the insane structures, thereby preventing a vast majority of all violence and other insanity.

How do you dismantle the structures? Easy, by refusing to take part in them, by rejecting the three root insanities (irrational emotion/hysteria, self-hate, and mob mentality) that all insane structures base themselves on. Once you refuse to legitimatize the insanity, you prevent all crime, all abuse, all injustice. So long as society continues to commit injustice en masse, expect more killers and more self hate and more insanity. Trying to "prevent" individual acts of insanity is a shortsighted method, and will not help with anything in the long run.

However, it is nice that you want to prevent this from happening, it starts discussion.

I think revenge doesn't serve a purpose to a point. I DO think that if something (f.e. rape, murder, etc.) happened to me or a loved one I'd want to see some damn punishment.

I'm still reeling from the person who said they think rape should be a punishment enacted by the state against rapists, and that there would be professional rapers who would do the raping, and that rapists getting raped would stop rapists raping.

I don't think 'an eye for an eye' justice is morally correct. I think prison is an effective way of removing someone who is a danger to society from society until either they cease to be a danger or they die, and I don't mind supporting the prison system through taxes.

I also think it's as good a deterrent and punishment as you'll get - countries with capital punishment don't have lower murder rates, for example.

Ultimately it's up to each country to decide, but I personally feel much more comfortable living in a society which gives its government very limited opportunities to hurt its people than I would where the government was permitted to rape, pillage and butcher as long as it was for revenge.