Agreed, and to add on, incarceration then, is about protecting society from harmful people, not retribution. It makes no sense to say, were going to keep this p

Agreed, and to add on, incarceration then, is about protecting society from harmful people, not retribution. It makes no sense to say, were going to keep this person in jail for another 10 years because s/he really deserves it. Rather, we can't let them out because it seems likely they will harm other people. Obviously if you are person who was harmed in some way by this person, it's hard to hear and follow this plan. But as a society, we have to think in a more calm and deliberate manner, and try to make dispassionate decisions. Further, if in the future, we find a drug for psychopathy, such that we can just give it dangerous people in prisons, and they become rational, healthy people, at that point it makes no sense to keep incarcerating them. Holding the treatment as a further punishment also makes no sense. There is a point to be made that incarceration does potentially effect other people's drive to do bad things. Certainly their brain can be dissuaded by them seeing huge prison penalties paid for similar crimes they might do. But i'm not sure the correlation is all that high, and i'm not sure it's ethical to use one person to dissuade another. But that is a point that a society would have to decide on.