seradaar
If I could make him useful, I would, but he has a history of escaping or weaseling his way out. We don't have an army here, we have a small company at best. At home, making people do something to be useful -- hard labor or book work or something -- was easier. I could enforce that. Here we have fewer resources for that, and we can't trust that no one will kill him besides. I'd rather have him doing something useful, but it's safer overall to just remove him from society.
His punishment is being made to live with what he's done. If we killed him now, it would look barbaric, even if it was clean, and you know how I feel about that. This man... he helped murder children. Tortured them alive, and kept people in the very cages where we're keeping him now. As a ward of the state, so to speak, it's our duty as a civilized society to keep him fed and clean while we dispense that justice. It's what makes us better, showing kindness to the undeserving.