All you pro-death penalty people who say it's not about revenge or any other negative

[DanTex]

16. Well, revenge is one of the rationales for punishment.

Actually, retribution is the more accurate term here, because revenge is personal -- i.e. the victim of a crime might want revenge, but a third-party observer who wasn't individually hurt can only really be interested in retribution -- the idea that people who do harm deserve to have harm done to them.

Punishment can also serve to discipline -- this is primarily what parents use punishment for. It's not that they think that their children deserve to suffer for missing curfew or whatever, it's that being grounded will make the kids more likely to obey the rules in the future, and generally be good respectful people. Another purpose is deterrence. And, with respect to incarceration, another purpose is keeping criminals separate from the population so they can't commit crimes.

But the death penalty can't be justified on any of these other grounds. The only rationale is retribution, and that is certainly not in any way comparable to parents punishing their children.