LtCol Jean V. Dubois, from Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, has a viewpoint that I've always been rather partial to:
"I do not understand objections to `cruel and unusual' punishment. While a judge should be benevolent in purpose, his awards should cause the criminal to suffer, else there is no punishment -- and pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival. Why should society refuse to use such a highly perfected survival mechanism? However, that period was loaded with pre-scientific pseudo-psychological nonsense.
"As for `unusual,' punishment must be unusual or it serves no purpose.... Long enough. It means that such punishment is so unusual as to be significant, to deter, to instruct."
"I do not understand objections to `cruel and unusual' punishment. While a judge should be benevolent in purpose, his awards should cause the criminal to suffer, else there is no punishment -- and pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival. Why should society refuse to use such a highly perfected survival mechanism? However, that period was loaded with pre-scientific pseudo-psychological nonsense.
"As for `unusual,' punishment must be unusual or it serves no purpose.... Long enough. It means that such punishment is so unusual as to be significant, to deter, to instruct."