The ideology that punishment is a form of retribution, with the primary aim being to inflict as much suffering as the subject has earned through their crimes, r

The ideology that punishment is a form of retribution, with the primary aim being to inflict as much suffering as the subject has earned through their crimes, rather than to produce a change in behaviour, is what leads to the US having the world's largest prison population and world's highest incarceration rate but having far more violence that other countries at a similar level of economic development and no significant decrease in violent crime. It doesn't work on a nation-state level either - they tried the harsh punishment route after WW1 and it led to WW2.