Resolved: Rehabilitation Should Be Valued Above Retribution

I'm going to make this round really quick since it's been a long debate and I'm short on time, so here are the key voting issues as I see them. FairnessI've been waiting for my opponent to tell me how it is fair to the victim that the victim makes a loss that is not in any way redressed by rehab. Throughout the debate my opponent has ignored this and skirted the issue. In all his rebuttals he called "fairness", he never once actually talked about fairness. Instead he has attempted to refocus the debate on minor sub-issues, while missing this bigger criticism. The only times he's come close he's simply said that he doesn't want to seek to rehabilitate to the very end. That does nothing to justify why at all. Rehab's effectivenessMy evidence for rehab not working was more than a throwaway joke about Amy Winehouse. It was two clear arguments: "a) if indeed their environment has conditioned them as pro supports, then they have every incentive to not change, and b) if they are released back into the environment, then after rehab they'll go back to the same behaviors. " That quote comes from my very first round of constructive. Segregation is retributiveMy opponent keeps seeing segregation as exclusive with retribution. In fact, retribution is wholly inclusive of segregation. Is segregation not a punishment? Clearly this is true - a punishment is simply a penalty imposed for a crime, and a penalty is usually defined as a negative consequence of some description. Given that the offender probably doesn't want to be segregated (or why would they have committed a criminal act against another rather than segregate themselves? ) it's a punishment. Therefore it perfectly fits pro's own definition of retribution. My opponent later argues that segregation isn't deserved. First, if nobody deserves it, why value it? And secondly, this is quite obviously false - you don't just randomly segregate, you segregate as a consequence of crime. It's because somebody is a criminal that they are deserving. I hate to make a point so semantic, but pro has never justified their assumption that segregation is not retribution, when under their own definitions it clearly is. It's a pretty gaping contradiction in their argument. All justice is deterrenceAfter I made the claim that the existence of justice deters people, pro's last-round response was little more than "nah you're wrong". My opponent is, of course, completely correct in saying that retribution can deter people, but that does not mean deterrence is exclusive with other forms of justice. Indeed, by pro's own standard ("Actions against those not deterred can be used to deter others") deterrence is not the nature of the punishment but the consequence, so it cannot be independent. Thus, saying that parking tickets are not retributive because they're a deterrent is impossible. Criminals just unluckyMaking people "lucky" is what preventative justice is for. But criminals should pay for their crimes regardless. The same is true for the mentally ill - if somebody is deranged, it might be a good idea to not give that person a knife (preventative). But given that they've struck somebody with a knife, that's a failure on their part. They might not have been able to prevent that failure, and I'm sure any fair judge would be quite soft on them as a result, but somebody is still directly responsible for that crime. Whether they have free will is irrelevant - there's still a social cost with clear failures of responsibility that must be redressed. This debate is about what form that redress should take (rehab or retribution), not whether such redress is morally justified. ResponsibilityRegardless of how nature has made you, justice should be about a principle of making you responsible for you. That in and of itself change the environment to empower individuals (whether by free will or direct change as a result of the approach) to make positive changes in their lives, and prevent more crime from happening. Value of lifePro can dismiss his dismissal of the victim's life as having no value relative to the criminal's life under his model as "revenge sounding talk" all he likes - it's still not a rebuttal. My point goes unrefuted. Retribution has no value inside itselfBut who cares? If it's better for the victim, better for the criminal, better for society - it's a better system. You might as well advocate no system of justice because in an ideal world, no justice would be required anyway. In our world, however, retribution is the system that gets results. We can right the pastYou might not be able to change whether you picked up an apple at the supermarket, but you can change whether to pay for the apple or not when you reach the checkout. Sure, you can't bring back somebody you've murdered, but at least you can pay back the crime in some other manner, for instance by being removed from society for a while. You won't make a better societyI provided a heap of rebuttals to this that were never engaged with - for example, society changes during rehab, effects of rehab are inherently unpredictable, judges don't know optimal moral outcome when assigning rehab therapy, etc. The assumption that more rehab = better people remains completely unjustified. I oppose the death penalty and all punishments that physically harm the offenderWhether you're a hardcore anti-crime nut who wants to put all criminals in gladiator fights to the death, or a convinced liberal like me, you can agree on retribution. We can argue about what punishment is deserved another day - this debate is about whether deserved punishment is in fact the correct response to crime. All justice is riskyPro never justified why rehab is less risky than retribution. The only example of a risk of retribution pro could give you, however, was wrongful punishment, to which I answered last round: "it's a much surer bet than any than judges can make about the future". This debate is not about whom we punish - I agree we should only punish those who deserve it (indeed, that's part of the definition of retribution). This debate is about whether we punish, as opposed to reform. Put against all the unrefuted harms of rehab I've given in this debate, and this isn't really much of an attack on my model at all. The resolution is negated.