“Never say never”: against the life sentence, in favor of an unsettled penality

The articles describes the life sentence as a pre-modern form of justice that denies the humanity of condemned people and reproduces a camouflaged death penalty. Retracing the beginning in Italy of a campaign called “Never say never”, through which Italian lifers were calling for a death penalty, the Author argues that, as long as the humanization of punishment fails to reach the darkest corner of the penal system, it will be impossible to give radically new shape to the field of penality.