Life in prison versus the death sentence... The first argument that comes to mind is which one do you think is cruel and unusual?

A. You have wronged your fellows and are very to likely to continue down this path so; your life is forfeit.

or

B. You have wronged your fellows and are very likely to continue down this path so; you are to be locked away for the next 40-70 years in a cell with the worst society has to offer and allowed to live life every day without ever knowing freedom again.

I think the life sentence may be the cruelest punishment we institute. A life tortured or an end to it all? More importantly, the life sentence has made large strides towards destroying the heart of our prison systems. Prisons are SUPPOSED to be about reform. A criminal goes in, but a citizen with a better shot comes out. That is meant to be the plan. Without that, all the prisons have revolving doors and serve no real function except as free lodging for society’s worst. But when you put someone into a reform institution, who is never allowed to leave... It twists the nature of the institution into something it is not meant to be. A life sentence is the modern version of "exile"; we just ran out places to exile people to so we started locking them up.

As to the comment on rape victims just being 'too weak' and how they should 'just get over it'... This isn't a bad day at the office. There is a time and a place to call upon strength. You cannot ask a mother who's child has just been murdered to "suck it up and move on already" at the funeral. Her life has been violently altered from that point forward. There is no returning to normal; normal died and something else replaced it.

The same applies to rape Victims. Key word VICTIMS. It is not the responsibility of the victims to 'get over it' and move on. That attitude has been the problem for the last two centuries. It is the same attitude that perpetuates domestic abuse; 'it’s just a punch, I get punched all the time'. Why not justify genocide while you’re at it? With enough word play, you could make any crime sound less monstrous than it is. Thieves do it all the time.

It is wrong, it is a crime, and you can not put the blame on the victims with a writ of 'they just weren’t strong enough' without becoming one of their attackers.

Keep the blame on the criminals, and the societies that breed them, for that is where the blame belongs.