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Jailing an adult for the rest of his/her natural life is jailing someone with the capacity to make moral decisions and legal decisions who has abused that capacity and has violated the law -- of course, if he/she has been proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
* Retribution: It punishes that adult with moral and legal capacity by taking away his freedom.
* Rehabilitation: If the crime is sufficiently serious to warrant life incarceration, rehabilitation is not on the table as a plausible option.
* Deterrence: One hopes that it will get through to others not to commit similar crimes.
* Protection of the community (I can't remember the other term right now -- dealing with too many things at the moment): If he's guilty of an offense serious enough to require lifetime incarceration, that's precisely the kind of offender from whom society ought to be protected.
BUT the difference between jailing an ADULT and jailing a 12-year-old CHILD boils down to the diffrerence between the adult's moral and legal capacity and the child's moral and legal capacity. And, as long as those differences between adults and children do exist, and they do and will for the foreseeable future, well, there it is.
So, too, with the legally sane adult versus the legally insane adult.
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