@eris@akko.disqordia.space the problem again, as @drq@mastodon.ml mentioned briefly but not elaborated enough at, is abuse of these measures.

I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about idealistic societies where the judgement is almost perfect: how much does it differ from the equally unrealistic society where the crime does not exist at all?

In non-ideal society the power of death penalty will be abused, overused, mal-used, and so on, say, as a foolproof way to remove the polical opponents, while even the lifetime imprisonment is still limited by the characteristic law stability timescale, which can be pretty short in some countries.

For example, Fyodor Dostoevsky was originally sentenced to death for some allegedly revolutionary activity, which was changed to Siberian exile in the last few moments before the firing squad executed the order. He wrote most of his novels after the exile.