The idea has arisen that survivors delegate their right of vengeance to the state, which then takes on the responsibility to carry it out. A rational society would demand individuals renounce vengeance in order to avoid every family settling feuds with drive-by shootings. Even with the best intended effort to confine our vengeance to a proportionate response founders on our emotional limits. I do others. What will look to me like perfectly measured vengeance will almost certainly seem outrageously excessive to the recipient, even if we both make an effort to evaluate the situation justly.
Misery loves company.
Suffering makes us want to lash out, to make other people share our pain. The record includes enough cases where survivors have bitterly denounced efforts to free defendants even when an overwhelming body of evidence points to their innocence to make this clear. A criminal justice system based on the right of vengeance will inevitably have less respect for the truth of the matter, of the actual guilt or innocence of the accused, than one based on other values, such as the protection of the community. Adding the satisfaction of an instinct for vengeance to the requirements makes all the other jobs much more difficult. They have every right to demand decent treatment in the justice process, and the right to our best efforts to make them whole afterward.