The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 5: The Three ‘R’s 
Page 5: Retribution

NARRATOR

Instead, we base the severity of your punishment on the severity of your crime.

Stealing a million dollars is punished more severely than shoplifting.

Judge sentencing a businessman to “20 years state prison” and a teen girl to “20 hours community service”

Giving someone a black eye is punished less severely than putting him in traction.

Average Joe with a black eye, “less than” sign, hospital patient in full-body cast

Intentionally murdering one person is punished more severely than killing a family in a car accident.

Bloody hatchet, “greater than” sign, car coming around mountain curve in wrong lane into oncoming traffic

This PROPORTIONALITY—this sense that the punishment must fit the crime—is the hallmark of RETRIBUTION.

Average Joe wearing an eye patch while the State pokes someone else’s eye out *blort*

This is your classical “eye for an eye” purpose of punishment, and it’s what most people are thinking of when they talk about getting “JUSTICE.”

Justice is not about making you nicer, or deterring potential acts in the future, or even about taking you off the streets…

…It’s about you getting what you DESERVED.