Rehabilitation or Retribution, Our criminal justice system. Options

[MissHygienic]

Which one should we focus on more in our criminal justice system? Basically, which one would serve as a satisfactory/fitting punishment for prisoners?

[ersatz]

I personally feel better mentally about rehabilitation. Punishment always strikes me in an odd place; I've had strange experiences myself with "punishment", and it just irks me that certain people have the authority to say what another "deserves" for their perceived wrongdoing. In any case, more often than not, there is some sort of experience(s) that the criminal had early on in life that somehow affected his/her decision to commit the crime, so when I put that into perspective, I think that rehabilitation is the only "fair" thing to do. Whenever something traumatic happens to someone, we're always so nice until they do something "bad" because of it. Punishment is really not always the best deterrent. It works well with children only because they have not yet developed their own set of morals. Criminals obviously have a greatly differing moral code than most, so their code needs to be analyzed and the "bad" thing needs to be changed.