The reductionist approach to criminal law punishment, sometimes also referred to as the deterrence approach, is a forward-looking style of punishment which seeks to deter criminals from undertaking future criminal activity. This can be done specifically, where a single person or group receives a targeted punishment to dissuade them from future bad actions (such as the threat of increasingly harsh punishments for future crimes regardless of the crime), or generally, where examples are made of criminals through the use of publicity and/or especially harsh punishments. Long-term incarceration falls under this category of punishment as well. This involves segregating criminals from the general, law-abiding population in order to prevent them from committing crimes. The retributivist approach, by contrast, is a more backward-looking approach which focuses on ensuring equivalency between the crime committed and the punishment received. Under a retributivist system, the legal system seeks to ensure that the “punishment fits the crime” and is only concerned with crimes committed in the past rather than those which might occur in the future. Alternatively, retributive justice might be concerned with offsetting any advantage gained by the perpetrator of the crime and assign punishment accordingly. In either case, punishment is assigned solely on the basis of the merits of the crime without regard for anything else. This is to be contrasted with reductionist justice, which seeks to deter future crimes when assigning punishment to past crimes. Consider an example of a case where reductionist and retributivist approaches might yield different conclusions as to the optimal level of punishment. A young man engages in the criminal activity of vandalism by keying cars in a store parking lot. This man happens to be in a gang, as indicated by his style of dress and his