I think that punishing people is always counter-productive. It may appear to get a result but only ever displaces a problem. It provides no intelligent solution to deviancy and merely creates another issue further down the line. Punishment in whatever form is the act of wilfully causing damage to a person as retribution for their bad behaviour. The intention is to desist them from repeat action but there is also the less edifying sense of there being some kind of pay-back for what they have done.

Punishment always compounds the problem issue which then usually manifests in another way at a later time. Punishing people by imprisonment is insane. It may keep offenders away from society but prisons are in society too and are simply incubators for all kinds of further psychological ills that result from the incarceration.

Given that the emphasis on rehabilitation is minimal in the prison system it means that damaged people are further damaged by the experience and then thrown back out into the world again. This is why the system is insane. It is yet another example of the crass stupidity of humans in their failure to understand their psychological nature.

It would almost be better to exterminate people rather than put them in prison. At least it would nullify future aberrations and as such would be a more constructive practice. Obviously I'm not advocating that but use it to illustrate my level of contempt for retribution generally.

The fact that punishment has been an acceptable activity down the ages and remains so typifies how primitive humans are. I understand deviancy is a difficult problem to deal with but punishment as a solution is verging on useless.