Views on the Death Penalty? (a poll)

[Dystopia]

How is the death penalty considered revenge but life in prison is not?

Capital punishment doesn't have to be considered revenge - It depends on how you apply it. If the reason we execute people is to please the victim, to satisfy people's desire to see blood being shed or out of anger towards the criminal - Then it's revenge. If we execute someone merely because we believe it is the best punishment to be applied regardless of what victims think, then it is not based on revenge.

The issue in this case is that a lot of death penalty supporters ask the question "what if it was your family?" and that shows clearly that there's a lot of revenge involved - Not only that, but punishment/retribution itself is less valuable than prevention because the former merely consists in inflicting some kind of suffering or deprivation (like prison) as an end itself - Basically, the retributive theory of justice says punishment is an end itself - You do shit, you get punished, and that's it, it's the justice imperative... For prevention legal theories punishment should be a means to reach a higher good trough intimidating the individual, rehabilitation, deterrence and so on - Essentially retributive conceptions don't care about preventing future crimes, all that matters is proportionally punishing the criminal according to the crime committed  - Prevention ideas have a more pragmatic and useful finality for punishment.

Since we can't legally deny the existence of free will because it's none of the State's business, we assume it exists in criminal law at least as a useful fiction to help us determine how harsh someone will be punished (and if they should be punished at all) - The issue is not retribution itself, because some degree of retribution always exists, it is when people believe the only purpose of the sentence is to hurt and avenge society that it becomes a problem - That seems to be common among some death penalty supporters.

Obviously life in jail is not comparable because western societies have been progressively supporting and implementing human rights trough various international regulations and consensus between societies and governments - One of the most fundamental human rights' is the right to your own life and to never be deprived of it unless someone acts on self-defense or fulfillment of duties (like serving in the military) - Obviously the tendency is towards abolishing the death penalty because it is considered inefficient as a deterrent and susceptible to wrongful conviction - Not to mention there's clearly biases so in the end the most convicted criminals are the poorest less wealthy ones - I can guarantee you'll never see a corrupt politician or wealthy person being sentenced to death, at least not very often.

If it helps, I think life in prison is useful because the criminal can work to repay his/her debt and probably the staying in prison - Additionally parole could be granted in cases when the person really demonstrates full rehabilitation.

I'm a proponent of a mixed penal system - No death penalty and no life in jail (abstractly) - The maximum jail time would be something like 20 or 25 years - However, after every criminal finishes serving time they would be evaluated by a psychiatrist and if the latter determined dangerous behavior and tendencies still existed then they would have to stay for a few more years - Obviously a minority of criminals would end up rotting there, but what can we do? It seems to be the German system and also present in Finland, Sweden, etc. I'm heavily influenced by German jurisprudence and legal doctrine (as a law student)