Which View of punishment is best: Utilitarian view or Kant’s?

We live in a world of right and wrong, with most wrong doings coming with some sort of ‘domino effect’ punishment following.  In class, we went over two different kinds of punishments.  Utilitarianism; where crimes are thoroughly punished, and Kantianism; where crimes are left off with warnings with no punishment involved.   Utilitarian’s believe that the overall happiness of a society matters more than anything else.  When a person creates a circumstance for him or herself that consequentially places them in a position where society would say they “deserve to be punished”, utilitarian’s evaluate the situation and do everything in their power to assure that the most happiness is achieved. The goal of this essay is to convince you, the reader, to side with the Utilitarianism side instead of the Kantian ways.
	Back in 1972, there was a serial killer, by the name of John Wayne Gacy.  This man would take little boys (ages vary from 12-18) to his house, rape them, murder them and bury them under his house.  Gacy was eventually caught by the Chicago Police Department and killed with a lethal injection for his heinous actions.  This is an example of utilitarian ethics.  See, if we followed Kantian ethics, what would we have done differently; slapped Gacy on the wrist?  Allowing him to go out and rape and murder more children?  Telling him ‘now don’t do this again or something non-existent might happen!’  Killing Gacy was for the good of the community and thus bringing parents and community members to an all-time happiness (not for the families that had their child murdered, but even then knowing that this psychopath is dead and can’t harm anyone else as they’ve been harmed had to bring them some justification.)
	What so desperately attacks my mind is how the Kantian ethics works.  Let me paint a word picture for you.  Lets say, a girl goes and steals a snow cone from a snow cone stand.  On the other side of town, someone is brutally murdering their neighbor for saying hi to them.  Both individuals are brought in to the police station and given a talk to by the sheriff.  He says ‘Haha you guys are so funny. Don’t do that again!’ and are let off with a warning.  Now is that fair to anybody?  How someone can get away with murder, to be face to face with the justice system and to be given a free pass?  I can definitely understand why the child would be let off, but the 2nd one just seems a bit too much to swallow.  We were all taught as a child that murder is the worst thing you can do.   If we didn’t give out punishment for murder, nothing could function; because we’d just kill everyone who opposed us and get off scot-free.   This situation is EXACTLY why we need some sort of punishment system.
	I remember distinctly in class we talked about a situation where a town of utilitarian’s were torturing an innocent child in order to achieve the maximum amount of happiness.  Kant would definitely argue this dilemma, as just because the maximum amount of happiness is available to us on a silver platter, doesn’t make it right.  We as humans are excessively tunnel-visioned, and egotistical in order to make sure that we achieve whatever we want in life.  If it means torturing a child to get infinite immunity from all diseases for your family, us as humans would definitely not oppose to that.  This does not make it justifiable or right though.  There will be a few people that will stand up to the masses to defend the child, but lets face it: we care too much about ourselves to care about other people.  There will always be more people looking out for themselves than random civilians.
	My final argument is that people who follow Kantian ethics might argue that criminals should not be punished for more than what they deserve.  For example... Police brutality being enforced on a criminal who is infamous for burning down houses.   People might argue that it is ‘unjustifiable’ or ‘morally wrong’ to physically and willingly hurt somebody.  I 110% disagree with this for one reason. If you do something wrong, you will get punished right back in the same or more severe fashion.
	In conclusion, I am and always will be a support for utilitarian ethics.  It is very important for a society to function that there are rules and punishments to coincide with each other.   It is incredibly important to do things for the right of the community rather than for the views of one person.  It is also very important to punish criminals for the crimes that they have committed.