Settle the debt or mend the bond
On the axis: The meaning of punishment · the crime
Is the crime a debt to the order, settled by making the offender suffer, or a rupture between persons, repaired only by acknowledging the victim and restoring the bond? And how would added suffering pay for a wrong?
Justification
Crime negates right; punishment is the negation of that negation, which annuls the crime and restores right. Deterrence treats the criminal like a dog threatened with a stick; retributivism, by contrast, honors him as a rational being, for his punishment is contained in his very deed and constitutes his own right. The measure is not literal like-for-like, but the equivalence of value between crime and punishment.
Elements of the Philosophy of Right, §90-103 (§99 negation of the negation, §100 the criminal honored, §99 Add. the stick and the dog)