Rehabilitation ought to be valued above retribution in the United States criminal justice system

UtilitarianismSince Pro's case for rehabilitation over retribution presupposes utilitarianism, Pro needed to give a defense of utilitarianism. That is, she needed to explain to us why we should think it's true. She still hasn't done that. All she has done so far is respond to an objection I raised. It's not enough to respond to objections to utilitarianism. She needs to defend its truth.In her response to my counter-example, she agreed with me that killing off old dependent people would relieve tax payers and help get the country out of debt. But she thinks the benefits are outweighed by the harms and that killing those people would still be wrong on utilitarian principles. So let's look at her reasons. She gives three reasons: (1) killing off old people will leave families grieving, (2) the government may come up with a reason for new taxes, and (3) funerals are expensive.With regard to 1 and 2, these old people are going to die anyway. The whole reason a lot of them are using up tax money is precisely because they're on their death beds. They're being treated for terminal illnesses. So 1 and 2 don't make any difference. With regard to 2, that is speculative. In any event, if the government comes up with some other way to spend money so that the debt and high taxes continue, surely that money will go to something with more ultilitarian value than prolonging the lives of people who are a drain on society.Besides that, 2 could be turned against Pro. She argues rehabilitation against retribution on the basis that rehabilitation is cheaper. It's a smaller burden on tax payers. I could answer just like her and say that if we save tax payers money by not sending people to prison, the government will just think of something else to spend the money on.Does rehabilitation workPro quotes a source (without a good citation) saying that in Demark, rehabilitation seems to work because the re-offending rate is lower in Denmark than in England. I grant that rehabilitation sometimes works. As I said in the last round, it doesn't have to be rehabilitation or retribution. We can have both. So saying that rehabilitation works is not enough to say that rehabilitation should be emphasized over retribution.FairnessPro seemed to not understand my argument from fairness. i argued that retribution should be emphasized over rehabilitation because it's more fair. Under retribution, people get what they deserve. More sever crimes merit more sever punishment (usually in the form of longer sentences). But with rehabilitation, it doesn't matter how serious the crime is. What matters is what it takes to rehabilitate somebody. If a rapist can be rehabilitated more quickly and easily than a marajuana smoker, then a marijuana smoker will have a longer sentence, which is unfair. Pro responds by saying that people who are dangerous to society can be locked up, which is irrelevant to my point.Pro also misunderstood my argument from the 8th amendment. I argued that the purpose of the amendment was to protect people from cruel and unusual punishment, which means that the punishment should fit the crime. It assumes retribution. But rehabilitation can undermine the 8th amendment because the severity of the punishment/treatment would have to be proportional to whatever it took to rehabilitate the person rather than proportional to the severity of the crime. Her response is that we can't rely on the 8th amendment since some people get cruel and unusual punishment anyway (e.g. the death penalty). But that is irrelevant to my point.Pro's contentions1. Rehabilitation can help our community.I pointed out that the article she quoted said nothing about rehabilitation, but only mentioned keeping people in prison to keep the public safe. She didn't bother to defend that quote or explain how she got rehabilitation out of it. Instead, she refers to her "card" as saying, "This emphasis on results over retribution would bring many benefits." I have no idea what's she's quoting or whether it's a reliable source. It sounds like the source, whatever it is, is just restating Pro's opinion. It's not offering an argument for it.2. Retribuation has strong negative effects on children and familiesI said that the article quote didn't show causation; it only showed correlation. Pro responded by re-quoting the first line, which uses the word "result." However, my argument isn't that the article never claims causation. They surely do in the first line just as Pro said. Rather, I pointed out that the article failed to show causation. In the evidence produced in support of the first sentence in the article, all they showed was correlation. My claim is that the author of the article made an unwarranted inference by assuming causation where there is only correlation.3. Rehabilitation is more cost effectivePro basically gives no response to my argument here. While she had quoted an article saying that drug rehabilitation works, I responded by saying the fact that drug rehabilitation works doesn't mean rehabilitation works for other crimes. I suggested that drug rehabilitation works because the parties are willing. Her response, amazingly enough, was to say that people on drugs are not willing. But that leaves her third contention undefended. She hasn't made a case for why we should think other crimes could be rehabilitated as effectively as drug crimes. She even says that the harsher crimes I listed would be handled differently than drug crimes, which seems to me to concede my point.ConclusionI recommended retribution in the name of fairness--people get what they deserve. Pro claims that under rehabilitation, people also get what they deserve. But "desert" doesn't really fit in with utiltarianism. There's nothing about rehabilitation that entails that people get what they deserve. If she advocates a program where people get what they deserve, then she is advocating retribution because that's what retribution is--giving people what they deserve.