Balioc are you serious about this? Maybe I'd love to put a round between the guy's eyes, but that's impractical because I'd go to jail. So I'm forced to peruse practical options like using the justice system to fuck him over as much as possible. Nothing complicated. It's not about how I think things should be, the system is there for me to use, so I use it.

OK, to start with: I think people are reading way too much into my “go take vengeance yourself, if you want it” comments.  Which is understandable, I suppose.  But let me be clear – I imagine that, for the vast majority of people, “engage in vigilante retribution and bear the wrath of the state” is not going to be worth the cost, even a little bit.  It’s not much of a real option and I don’t mean to imply that it is.  (This is, again, completely leaving aside any abstract question of whether or not vigilante retribution is ethical.) 

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“So I’m forced to peruse practical options like using the justice system to fuck him over as much as possible.”

…does that help?  At all?

If a piano fell on his head, if an alligator emerged from the sewer and savaged him, would that be justice? 

To the extent that your feelings are “I’m mad at this guy and I want him to suffer in any way that I can get,” that’s fine, sort of – at the very least, it’s a totally coherent and explicable position – but it’s also probably not the kind of thing that anyone else has very much reason to support, or the kind of thing that society-at-large has an interest in indulging.  (For example, people often feel just that way even if they don’t have legitimate grievances – “that bitch got the promotion instead of me” can certainly inspire raw vengefulness.)

The claim seems to be that “victims’ desire for closure” is a different kind of psychological animal.  That it’s not just a retributive impulse, but rather a need to see some kind of abstract principle of right conduct manifested through social action. 

I understand that need, at least a little bit.  What I don’t understand is why anyone thinks that it can be met by administrative action.  To my eyes, “the jury convicted him and he went to jail” has about as much power-of-abstract-justice in it as “a piano fell on his head.”  If I take vengeance personally, I know exactly what the grievance is, what harm was done, what punishment is demanded by my sense of justice, what the relevant character traits of the perpetrator and the victim are, etc. etc.  The state has access to none of this stuff, and is blind and deaf with regards to actual justice.