Criminal justice is a wriggling fish. You think you’ve grasped it and then it slides away into uncertainty (at least for me).
In India endemic rape and murder are being fought with the ultimate weapon, the death penalty; while in Norway mass murder is being treated with ‘civilised’ understanding, even some attempt to teach a lesson, whatever that may be.
I know the cherished hawks here will have a ready answer but I’m really not sure which ideas are the moral way.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/13/delhi-gang-rape-men-sentenced-death and
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/12/anders-breivik-university-oslo
Boadicea's Chariot 
The less violent crime a society has to deal with the more tolerant it is of criminal behaviour, no matter how abhorrent. There are exceptions to this, of course — Japan has very little property or violent crime but enforces capital punishment — where as Russia has high property and violent crime and punishments are not quite as stringent. India ultimately has little choice but to do this — gang rape is so grave a matter in India that anything short of the using the ultimate weapon would cause a complete collapse in public confidence in the Indian judicial system and a fall into vigilante-ism — not that India is far away from that now.
So the death penalty is seen as a deterrent in violent societies? That’s the big question, imo.
Which got me thinking “who has it and who hasn’t” Here’s a very interesting map from Wikkie
It would appear that the “split” is almost on religious lines, with the obvious exception of Uncle Sam, although it’s a bit unfair to colour the whole USA brown because a lot of states have abolished capital punishment, what do you think?
G’morgen, Soutie. Well, yes, if you call totalitarianism a religion. I include the USA in that category – total delusions of adequacy.