That's where I swing away from both liberal and conservative.
I think penal colonies should come back in vogue. If somebody is a repeat offender of any stripe, or has committed something truly pathological and large in scope--in short, if it wasn't a one-off crime of passion or desperation, but illustrative of a total disregard for community and the American public at large...I say let them tough it out in a society/landscape of their own making. There has to be some desolate but habitable ex-strip mine riddled land somewhere where we can set up such a thing. Maybe I've seen "Escape from New York" too many times, but its an idea whose time left us prematurely, imho. Oh, and the Ken Lay/Andy Fastow's of this world go in, too. Federal prisons for the elite 'soft' convicts should be dismantled...there should no longer be a distinction between white and blue collar pathological criminals. That would make a few cannibalistic capitalists check themselves next time they want to steal grandma's pension...
The thing about executions is, they bring out the bloodlust in the saddest sorts of folk. It doesn't repair any damage, it only promotes a false sense of justice. The thing about life imprisonment is, it fails the ideal of rehabilitation as one of the main points of prison. Its just a horrible hotel stay at the public expense and what's the point?