Agreed. What's more valuable - letting a serial killer sit on death row for a few years, sucking up tax payer money for no good reason, and then killing him OR trying to understand why he did the things he did, and seeing if there is any way to help him enter society and be happy and productive? Does he deserve punishment? Well, that's another problem entirely. In many ways, my issue with this issue is the same one I have with religion - forcing people to not do bad things out of fear alone never works. If they're still doing them even when aware of what the de facto punishment is, there's a reason they're doing it and that reason needs to be understood.

Now I fear replies of the "But all perpetrators of Crime X can never be cured!" sort (with no supporting evidence, of course). The desire of modern society to punish everyone who doesn't live up to what is basically an arbitrary moral ideal without any attempt to help or understand the criminal is, to me, just as disturbing as the crimes they are seeking punishment for.