The Limits of Punishment

There are two ways of understanding the idea of proportionality. We're permitted to harm people only if doing so is going to bring out a significant good. Furthermore, there's a cap on how much you can punish a person. I don't think that it's obvious that we can rule out capital punishment. It may be that the death penalty is primarily to be ruled out on pragmatic grounds. There are very few people at least in attractive countries to live in like the UK who think that capital punishment would be very effective in deterring homicide.