What makes punishment legitimate? Two classic answers look in opposite directions. Retributivism looks back to the act already committed: a person may be punished because they are guilty and deserve a proportionate response. Kant insists that an offender cannot be used merely as a tool for deterring others; guilt must ground the punishment of that particular person. Consequentialism looks forward. Because punishment deliberately imposes hardship or deprivation, it can be justified only if it prevents greater harm through deterrence, incapacitation or reform, and if no less burdensome means can achieve the aim.
Each approach exposes the danger in the other. A theory concerned only with outcomes could, in principle, sacrifice an innocent person for public order or punish beyond what guilt warrants. A theory concerned only with desert can treat the infliction of suffering as justice completed, without asking whether it protects society, repairs relationships or reduces further offending. Contemporary debate therefore often distinguishes positive from negative retributivism. The negative form does not say that the guilty must be punished; it says only that punishment may fall on the guilty and must not exceed a proportionate limit.
My view is that consequences explain why a system of punishment is needed, while guilt and rights constrain whom it may burden and how far it may go. Purpose and boundary are both necessary. Punishment without public benefit tends towards revenge; prevention without a boundary of guilt turns people into instruments.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-punishment/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-social-political/
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