Rehabilitation ought to valued over Retribution in the US criminal justice system

Thanks for accepting my challenge."First I will present my thoughts on the matter. Let there be further debate on this issue in the remaining rounds. I will come from the standpoint of subconsciousness."Alright."The reason for these crimes resides in the pre-determine setting of our environment. May it beforehand be created or a result that flows accidentally. The reason for its existence is unknown from birth. Everything after that is taught or subconsciously taken. This information within the brain will be given meaning by the act or the surrounding emotions that labels it. Within that the character will be formed over time and at a certain point firmly positioned within the remaining years hence adulthood. Leading to the fact that I hereby defend the point of a lack in consciousness and choice. The setting of these human beings are set in motion to react in certain environments. For example, the law that has been placed, but still broken under circumstances of hunger. Whereas this individual might not even want to steal, but must provide for his starving family. Within that the force of this constant external influence, present at that moment in time will lead to a pre-determent effect by cause. By it and uncontrollable human responds to it therefore not within control. Unconscious behavior and in reality guilty is not the variable (the individual) but the constant at that point (the environment, human settings). It relinquishes any form of conscious act and proven to be not guilty.Basically they can't help doing it. Just like you have habits you might find hard to break the same goes for these people. The same force that binds your habits binds theirs. Only difference is where that force is applied. By that I state that its not their fault and they should be helped instead of punished for something that is not within their control at that moment. Realise that even if you consciously noticed what you are doing does not mean you have the means to stop it."I'm going to layer arguments against this because my opponent makes several claims, he talks about determinism (pre-determined variables), then about culpability (conscious action), then about breaking the law for good reason (stealing to save your family)Firstly, if my opponent makes a deterministic argument, then it is false, because determinism is a) incompatible with moral discussion given that morality requires choice and b) determinism is scientifically false. Ask any quantum phycisist, Einstein and Newton sought a formula to deterministically predict everything, but quantum mechanics shows that there's no definitive way to see the outcome of an event given the initial circumstances.Onto culpability! Firstly, because humans still make choices, they are always at least partially culpable. There is no human being that has absolutely no control over his own body. Secondly, people choose to enter bad habits. Even if I'm born into a certain situation, I still have choices. And most importantly - Are all criminals not responsible? Some criminals, psycopaths, commit crime for no reason at all, and I believe it is 1 in 5 criminals that is a psychopath (according to the wikipedia entry... not the best source, but the references at the bottom of the page do suffice). Some criminals commit crime not because they need to feed their starving family but simply because they want goods but not work. Of course, there will be some criminals, like criminals with severe mental disorders, who are not at fault for their crimes, but severely mentally ill people are not the majority of the people in the criminal justice system. Therefore, even by my opponents argument, you value Rehabilitation under Retribution because it's still going to be used less prevalantly. This is the largest problem with culpability arguments - How do I quantify culpability? I have three options - Rehabilitate all prisoners, Rehabilitate some, or Quantify culpability and then draw a line whereupon that would determine if someone would be rehabilitated or punished retributively. It's unquantifiable and therefore we rehabilitate all, or none. So, because as I pointed out, only a few people have extreme enough cases to be nearly totally unculpable, you punish in most cases.Finally, onto stealing to save your family from starvation. This is closely linked to culpability. Firstly, stealing obviously wasn't the only option. The man could ask for help from friends or relatives, go to charity organizations, get a job, etc. Also, he was in that situation as a result of his choices. No matter how bad the circumstances were, he still had choices to make, and he evidently made the wrong ones. So disregard this argument."Fine to use other sources, whatever you find most interesting. I will ask of you to try and use your own words in the matter. I haven't read the entire text, so my apology if somewhere in there you did pose your own opinion."I cite other sources when other people are smarter than me and thus explain a philosophical principle better than I do (like the Nozick card), or if I'm presenting some statistical evidence (like the BJS statistic).But the case as a whole is mostly my words, or at least my ideas stringing citations together.Now onto why we should vote Con/Neg/against the resolution here.1) My opponent provides no weighing mechanism to determine how the government ought to act - So, we need to fulfill my requirement of the government equally treating people because people are equal. Thus,a)People are equal and unfair advantages need to be rectified - with punishment, not therapeutic aid (C 1)b) The government has to benefit and burden people equally because all people are equal. That is, government institutions help everyone - everyone has the opportunity to go to public schools, the police and fire departments protect everyone, etc., thus they are legitimate. However, rehabilitation unfairly provides services to this minority of 6.6% of the people and places the burden of providing treatment onto all the taxpaying, law-abiding citizens in society. (Contention 2)Which should be sufficient for a neg vote2) Hard determinism is incorrect. Even if we do adopt some deterministic principles, we only rehabilitate in the few cases where it's truly necessary - Severe mental disorders. Therefore, we still value retribution over rehabilitation.