Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

The general object which all laws have, or ought to have, in common, is to augment the total happiness of the community; and therefore, in the first place, to exclude, as far as may be, every thing that tends to subtract from that happiness: in other words, to exclude mischief.

But all punishment is mischief: all punishment in itself is evil. Upon the principle of utility, if it ought at all to be admitted, it ought only to be admitted in as far as it promises to exclude some greater evil.

(Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart, in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. F. Rosen and Philip Schofield [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996], chap. 13, secs. 1-2, p. 158 [footnote omitted] [book first published in 1789])

Note from KBJ: Bentham viewed punishment as intrinsically bad, and therefore in need of justification. Retributivists disagree, saying that deserved punishment is intrinsically good, and therefore in no need of justification.