> The purpose of the death penalty itself is vengeance. It does nothing to prevent crime

It prevents at least one person from ever doing crime again

I see the same arguments made about long prison sentences. It doesn't do anything as a deterrent to others so it's useless!

That's only true if the goal is deterrence. Not if the goal is simply to lock a criminal away from the rest of society so they can't do more crime

That all said, I'm not in favor of public executions making a comeback.