http://www.patheos.com/blogs/pursuedbytruth/2015/05/transactional-justice-the-death-penalty-and-tsarnaev.html
Catholic tradition has long upheld the approach to criminal justice that the Old Testament presumed even while introducing moderating guidelines like “an eye [one eye only] for an eye.” These teachings were incorporated into the first edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2266, 1992 ed) , although the very next entry urges public authorities to limit their action to “bloodless means.” But just five years later, the entire treatment of protecting the common good was rewritten. Recourse to the death penalty is still “not excluded” (#2267), but only tolerated as a last resort when the public authority simply has no other way to keep the person from doing harm.
We are still on the level of transactional justice. It’s a very American viewpoint, seeing society as a collection of more or less undifferentiated individuals, the loss of any number of whom, while unfortunate, does not really affect the whole in an essential way. “An eye for an eye” works out well enough in this sort of system. When something goes wrong with a part of the body, though, be it a cell, an organ or a limb, we are not quite so cavalier. Nobody says, “an eye for an eye” when it is a matter of their eyesight. Heck, we are not even comfortable with Jesus’ own words, “If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out!” (although a few people in history have gone that far).
The trouble I see with transactional justice, especially when it goes as far as the death penalty, is that it keeps society on the level of transactional violence: it is just that society is authorized to carry out the violent act and random citizens are not. When it comes to ideologically motivated crime, such as the terrorism in Boston, there is no deterrent effect; there is not even the acknowledgement of legitimate authority. (The Tsarnaev brothers, having immersed themselves in an extremist culture of transactional violence, felt justified in taking lives in retribution for lives lost in the far-off Caucasus.)
Capital punishment is a distant reality for me (I don’t know any Death Row prisoners; I have never met anyone affected by a capital crime), but I do understand the transactional approach to society. Indeed, I could probably limit myself to this one area and never run out of things to bring to the sacrament of Penance. I have a terrible tendency to treat people in a transactional way; to reduce them to the roles they carry out, or the function they occupy in society (or, God help us, in community).