Not to put too fine a point on it, but the relevant criterion here isn’t what’s best in some abstract sense, it’s what governments actually implement, and to a lesser extent what our intuitions about punitive legitimacy say. Cultures vary, and so does rhetoric, but I’ve never heard of a justice system that wasn’t functionally motivated at least in part by retributive sentiment.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the relevant criterion here isn’t what’s best in some abstract sense, it’s what governments actually implement, and to a lesser extent what our intuitions about punitive legitimacy say. Cultures vary, and so does rhetoric, but I’ve never heard of a justice system that wasn’t functionally motivated at least in part by retributive sentiment.