Short Essay on Life Sentence

 Short Essay on Life Sentence

One of the nations that best understood the concept of punishment must be the English in view of how they categorised the penalty to be administered to the vilest: life sentence. Many nations refer to this term with different and occasionally euphemistic words such as ‘cadena perpetua’ in Spanish—which means ‘perpetual chain’—or ‘réclusion à perpétuité’ in French meaning ‘reclusion for perpetuity,’ the English opt for a more direct way of uttering it although. The word itself emits a profound, meaningful, and self-explanatory connotation. When a despicable act of savagery is committed, the judge gives the guilty two choices: he will serve his sentence either by dying or by being deprived of his freedom for good. Since people tend to abhor these punishments, it is understandable that the cruelest method of administration of justice is the forcible disconnection from the real world. Both serve the same goal of clearing a threat from society in a definitive way, which renders the distinction between them so subtle because either method consists of severing someone’s ties with the civil world once and for all. In fact, the real essence of the death penalty does not lie in the vengeful act of ‘civilised’ murder but in the bodily dehumanisation, which is the death of the wrongdoer. On the other hand, the real essence of the life penalty does not lie in the retributive act of unending incarceration but in the social dehumanisation, which is the permanent imprisonment of the wrongdoer. By this means, both penalties could be conceptually reduced to a similar punishment of the same degree of cruelty. Therefore, the English were in the right when they invented or somehow contrived to land on the plain expression of ‘life sentence’ as opposed to ‘death sentence,’ because it implies that life can sometimes be as much of a punishment as death itself. Living is sometimes more unbearable than dying, and an instant of excruciating agony followed by silent darkness is sometimes preferable to a multitude of years in continuous misery. This reality is flawlessly reflected in the story of Abel and Cain, found in the Bible. When the Lord curses Cain and condemns him, for killing his brother, to be a restless wanderer, aimlessly walking the Earth and never finding shelter, Cain objects with these eight words: ‘My punishment is more than I can bear.’  

Thank you for reading,

Athel.