PRISON is a place where criminals are sent as a punishment and so that the public can be protected from them.

The Northern Echo also argues that prison should be a place of treatment and education so that one day there is the chance that criminals can be rehabilitated and returned to society, where they will offer no threat and may make a useful contribution.

In fact, the European Court of Human Rights is probably correct in saying that all sentences should be reviewed after 25 years so that the criminal does have a hope of redemption and therefore has something to work towards.

However, the killing of Fusilier Lee Rigby must make even the most liberal of minds question their values and ask themselves whether Mr Justice Sweeney is not in fact correct to insist that a whole life tariff should mean exactly that for Michael Adebolajo.

His crime was so appalling in so many ways – notably its premeditation, its selection of a public servant as its victim, its brutality, its glorification and its perverted motivation – that we can fully understand why Mr Justice Sweeney, in a very thoughtful judgement, reached his conclusion.

It is such a rare case that Adebolajo does not deserve a second chance.

While we grapple with our conscience, it is strange to hear those on the right demand the return of the death sentence for the two killers.

That, though, is exactly what the two warped men wanted. They wanted to die. They wanted to become martyrs.

Hanging them might satisfy an immediate desire for revenge for their hateful crime, but giving them what they want would not be a punishment.