Retribution vs. Rehabilitation

[Locke]

The justice systems of the world, as most systems do, enjoy an amorphous dichotomy between ideological positions on how they should be run. Most developed systems employ a amalgam of retribution (i.e. direct, corporal punishment) and rehabilitation. However, for the sake of debate, which do you support?

[Cattraknoff]

Thieves, drug users and the like can be rehabilitated.

Those who murder and rape, do not deserve it. They have shown that they have no value for the lives of others, and as such we should not value theirs in the least.

[Locke]

It is not so much as valuing their lives as setting precedents.
If, insofar as thieves and drug users and the sort, there is a lack of clear punishment, the connection between action and consequence are blurred. This as an outcome will only produce more such people to rehabilitate, thus rendering the system inefficient.
As well, an argument for rehabilitation is that petty criminals may be the product of the surroundings, therefore they should not be punished as true criminals. Poverty, as they say, is the mother of crime. However, a rehabilitationist system would only create a continual shuffling through the system of these people. A criminal record, even one as trivial as theft or possession, will make potential employers wary and hesitant of hiring that person; thus, rehabilitation has done nothing more that to sink them back into the mire of that desperate zone of society, where they will once again be forced by their environment to commit crimes.
It seems I am in favor of specific punishments, as Catt is.