Quite so. The purpose of my simplified question was to contrast the concept of punishment with really any other option. Because I don't think America has faced the fact that many of its citizens still require punishment of criminals as opposed to rehabilitation, isolation or whatever may actually be a more appropriate and humane response, were religious or pseudo-religious doctrine taken out of the equation.

I believe the privitisation of the penal system in the US has set the stage for all kinds of misdirected incentives. I wonder if some who benefit from the system as it stands are in fact quite happy to perpetuate the need for revenge/punishment.

I do none the less understand the impulse for revenge on an individual level. Anyone who says they don't must have had a charmed life indeed. I just think it's time we start consciously removing such instincts from our penal systems.