> Punishment that neither makes the victim whole or rehabilitates the offender is just useless vengeance.

You're ignoring deterrence. And yes, deterrence works. I don't park in red zones all that often.

You're also ignoring the benefits of "warehousing". If person A commits an assault a week, general society avoids an assault every week that person A is in jail.

You can argue that the cost exceeds the benefit, but you don't get to ignore the benefit.

> At one point in our history the criminal justice discussions were about how best to rehabilitate the offender rather than punishment.

Yes, that's what they talked about, but what did they accomplish?

Rehabilitation is a secondary purpose of incarceration, its main purpose being to deter others from committing crimes and to isolate dangerous criminals. A lot of criminals don't even have to be rehabilitated (e.g. educated criminals or criminals serving lifetime sentences).

Rehabilitation has not always been a secondary purpose.