Abstract

This paper analyzes the problematic relationship between the death penalty and life imprisonment. The first part of the work is dedicated to examine the main steps that led to the replacement of capital punishment with life imprisonment. A discourse that calls into question a comparative evaluation between the utilitarian conception of Cesare Beccaria and the thesis of Kant and Hegel in favor of capital punishment. From the basis of these assumptions, we proceeded to analyze the more recent institution of life imprisonment, by means of which the State it takes the life of the condemned man, without taking it away from him physically, but socially