I mean, this question is not just about normal criminals.
Think like very bad crimes. Like serial killers, rapists, child rapists, terrorists, corrupt officials, terrible leaders, cruel dictators, generals that ignore laws of war, or like people has bad as Hitler. Which of these people do you think deserve a respectful burial, if any.
Is there a level of evilness that you think should not be allowed to have a proper buriel or have their corpses mutilated. Or should everyone deserve a respectful burial regardless of crimes.
I personally don’t even know how to answer this question myself. Like the funeral isn’t even for the dead. Its for the living. So to me, the question seems like, should the relatives of a bad person be allowed to see the corpse treated respectfully. I personally don’t have an answer to this question.
It is completely true; the only reason to punish bad behavior is to disincentivise it.
We are not born with inherent understanding of good, bad, and what ends justify the means. It’s all absorbed from our surroundings.
For example, you can be an openly corrupt authoritarian leader or CEO of massive evil corporation, and see yourself as good as you learned to put your family first and that randoms are all self-interested, so you might be as well in the name of something you hold dearer.
There are many ways to corrupt a person’s thinking in a way that is hard to unfuck as it gets fundamental. Harder, even, if the base idea is shared by many.
In that regard, getting cruel is, otn the practical side, only really an attempt to reinstate other values, or, more commonly, implant fear in others, so they might consider the danger too high and chicken out.