(I am answering the guy from a country without the DP who doesn't see why only the Death Penalty will avenge Travis Alexander's murder)
I had a son who was a violent sociopath from birth. He was also a criminal and served time in jail. When out of jail, he lived a pitiful life working for minimum wage and using his tremendous IQ to cook up fraud schemes, work up ways to justify beating people up, selling drugs/cheating people, etc.
He loved being in prison. He was a loser on the streets and kept lowering his peer group in order to feel superior until he was literally hanging with people who lived under the bridge. But he was really somebody in jail. He had the opportunity to buff up his body until it shone rippling with muscles. He quickly developed a following, acquired tattoos and was dispensing street smarts to younger criminals. Still with the dazzling model good looks.
He told me that having people afraid of you was "worth it" because you got respect. Being violent on the streets got you in trouble, but in jail it got you respect. And he just preened with that. He got his own private cell because everybody was afraid to be his cellie (sp?).
I lived in fear he would kill someone "for fun" and sure enough he was making plans. Why? Because it would give him the respect he craved. Why not commit a minor crime and go back to prison where he was respected? Because a minor crime doesn't get the respect. It starts you at the bottom and you have to claw your way up (by being violent). He figured if he hurt someone on the outside, they would respect him, he would see that in their eyes PLUS he would get more respect and have a higher pecking order in the gang when he got to prison (because of a more serious rap).
I am a non-violent person myself; however, I don't consider life in prison with an "opportunity to do good in the world" from jail is punishment. It shows that you do not know the criminal mind.
Take Jodi Arias for example. She is scorned in society, branded and will never have a decent boyfriend. Just look at her current admirer. SHe is a pariah no matter what the verdict. But in jail--why I saw it on the faces of the eager prisoners that Nancy Grace walked by.
"I know her, I sat by her at lunch once!" screamed one wretch.
"Will, Ay hayve talk-ed to her my SELF," said another and got an interview with the eye of the camera right in front of her wondering nose.
She is a celebrity in jail, smiling and waving at the crowd as she goes to and from her cell. They are all wishing her well, giving her an extra cookie, cowtowing to her, worshipping her. "Can I do your hair Miss Jody?"
This attention *advertiser censored* will be loving every minute of it as she writes her future best seller "The Law of Attraction vs. The Law in Arizona" - the legal cagefight of the year and how I won.
It has to be the Death Penalty, my foreign friend. Even if she sits on Death Row for twenty years at least she will be having PUNISHMENT for the heinous and deliberate act of torturing and carving up a human being to please her offended pride.