This is such a foolish way of looking at public order. The point is not whether murder is wrong or whether punishing is wrong, because after all we are not chil

This is such a foolish way of looking at public order. The point is not whether murder is wrong or whether punishing is wrong, because after all we are not children arguing about right and wrong. Rather, we need a public that is free of murderers and so when people engage in antisocial behavior we remove them from the public. We don't remove someone for X years because we think they "deserve" to be removed for X years -- we remove them for X years because that's how it takes them to age out of being prone to commit acts of more violence. It is about keeping society going. The moment you start getting into debates about right and wrong, you prove that you have no interest in keeping society going and are instead focused on making yourself feel good by making various philosophical pronouncements which are ultimately quite arbitrary. But what is not arbitrary is whether people can walk the streets safely at night or not. Do we live in a peaceful society or do we live in a society in which the wealthy barricade themselves in and hire private security while the poor are left to fend for themselves? That's what matters, and it's all that matters, because public justice is not an ethics class, it's a class about how to create safe streets so that society can continue to function in peace. The moment you stop caring about how to create a peaceful society, what you get is a violent society that eventually disintegrates into warring clans and someone will rise to the top who can promise order, and he will not care a bit about your philosophical debates. And the people will support him, because not worrying about being attacked as you walk about the city is a required part of having cities in the first place. And we want cities, we want high density living in which strangers can interact with each other without violence -- we want civilization. Therefore we adopt policies that defend that civilization independent of any musings about who has the right to take a life or imprison someone and what that means for someone's soul, etc. It is only those people who take it for granted that they are living in a peaceful society, who are able to engage in these musings about what is right and wrong. But God help the society that takes them seriously or listens to their advice.