In this view, the urge to retaliate may be universal but it is unhealthy, and retributive institutions are important primarily because they remove the psychic burden of vengeance from the individual whose vindictiveness might otherwise endanger themselves as well as others. Although no one would deny that excessive vindictiveness can become a destructive obsession and a form of mental illness, the therapeutic sensibility (to borrow Christopher Lasch's phrase) has done much to confuse the social issues inherent in the relationship between justice and revenge. Retributive institutions were established not to improve mental health but to enhance public safety. They remove the practical, not the psychological burden of revenge from individuals. If they fail -- or are seen to fail -- in the fulfillment of their practical function, they are likely to increase rather than decrease the psychic burden of vengeance. (Chap. 1 "Taboo")

The taboo attached to revenge in our culture today is not unlike the illegitimate aura associated with sex in the Victorian world. [...] The struggle to contain revenge has been conducted at the highest level of moral and civic awareness attained at each stage in the development of civilization. The self-conscious nature of the effort is expectable in view of the persistent state of tension between uncontrolled vengeance as destroyer and controlled vengeance as an unavoidable component of justice. [...] Like all prohibitions honored in the breach, the revenge taboo contains a disturbing potential for social regression. It is an enemy of the restraint it is mistakenly thought to encourage. (Chap. 1 "Taboo") (elisions added)

Like most matters of public policy, the current state of the criminal justice system reflects a value judgement, and the judgement is that there are matters far more important than protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty. While it is ridiculous to suppose that the general public will embark on blood vendettas if murderers are not put to death by the state, it is all too plausible that the public will lose confidence in the law if it believes criminals suffer not at all -- or not enough --- for their violent assaults on others. Plea bargaining and early parole are systematic practices -- not exceptions to the rule. There is a legitimate place for both in a compassionate system of justice, but not as a routine substitute for just retribution. (Chap. VIII, "On Crimes and Punishment")

The role of psychiatry in the criminal-justice system is even more problematic. Psychiatric justice, as it is practiced today, is not a matter of expediency but of philosophy -- a philosophy that rejects the principles of personal innocence, guilt, and retribution. [...] a large segment of the public seem to regard psychiatrists primarily as witch doctors who are dedicated to helping criminals escape the legal consequences of their deeds. The truth is a good deal more complicated, although it does not necessarily cast the alliance between legal and mental-health professionals in a more flattering light.

Psychiatrists in the courtroom today are sometimes viewed as advocates of crime without punishment but there is also a strong historical association between psychiatry and punishment without crime. Psychological labeling was practiced as a means of social control [...] The punitive misuse of psychiatry has frequently involved the application of differential standards of sanity to the poor and to women who fail to conform to their expected social roles. (Chap. VIII, "On Crimes and Punishment")