I do think punishment should be a consideration when determining jail time and, sorry, but if you take someone's life you should be made to pay with your own. (Freedom in this case as I still don't believe in the death penalty.) If someone's violence is so explosive that they take another's life, why should I place any trust in their ability to control it? And since we're talking only of the most heinous offenders anyway, there can be no amount of blind trust placed in them, as far as I'm concerned.
Now I do think we need to do a thousand percent better with prevention, with intervention at young ages. That has the possibility of hope, to my way of thinking. But to take someone young and harden them to the point where taking a life is something they do, I just can't conceive of someone coming back from that. If they do, it's gotta be rare. When that much hate and anger gets ingrained, it goes deep. Plus I think it speaks more to their nature when they commit really violent acts at a young age, particularly to an innocent victim (ie, not a tormentor or bully for example). Like the girl who shoved another off that bridge in BC or the one in Toronto who pushed her boyfriend to kill her "nemesis". That sh1ts ingrained, that's who they are.