Definition
Retribution is punishment justified on the grounds that the wrongdoer deserves it. It is payback: harm imposed because a moral wrong calls for a balancing harm in return, independent of whether the punishment deters future crime or repairs anything.
Behave singles out retribution as the part of criminal justice most exposed by a biological view of behavior, because deserved punishment depends on the offender having genuinely been able to choose otherwise.
Why it matters
How it works
Retribution feels natural because it has neural backing. Behave describes studies in which the act of punishing a norm-violator activates reward-related regions — payback is genuinely pleasurable. That makes the retributive instinct powerful and intuitive, but, Sapolsky argues, intuitive is not the same as justified.
His critique runs through free will. If an offender's act was the necessary product of biology and history, then "deserved" suffering rests on a notion of authorship the science does not support. Punishment may still be warranted for forward-looking reasons — protecting the public, deterring others, enabling rehabilitation — but the purely backward-looking, payback rationale collapses. Behave urges societies to keep the practical functions of punishment while abandoning the satisfying but unjustified appetite for retribution itself.