Reconciling hypothetical scenarios with ideological positions seems like a job for an LLM, as it's not really an interesting exercise. The consequential case i

Reconciling hypothetical scenarios with ideological positions seems like a job for an LLM, as it's not really an interesting exercise. The consequential case is the strategy you use when you are in opposition, and the retributive case is the strategy you use when you are in power. The reason is that when you are in power, you don't need to prevent crime any more than is strictly necessary for you to maintain office - so catching a few here and there and restricting retributive punishment to them only is sufficient to keep your end of the bargain, but retributive justice doesn't involve you in too much complexity or commitment. When you are an insurgent or faction, crime prevention is something you can promise to the coalitions who can swap you into power, and so imposing costs on criminals via decimation and grisly public examples is economical, mostly because the state isn't going to step in to protect them either. The economics of insurgent death squads are favorably quite cost effective and win-win, and they only become a political problem when they become too popular. Incumbent death squads just waste political capital and foment overthrow, so they're really only for kleptocrats who have an escape plan to another country, imo.