Mr Dwight Scott makes a telling point about the 20-year prison sentence that Supreme Court judge, Ms Gloria Smith, imposed on the killer of his 11-year-old son last week.

“…He can start his life over, but my son is gone forever,” he says in our Thursday edition.

According to Mr Scott, in 20 years or so when Mr Prince Levy gets out of prison for murdering little Amair Scott, he’ll be 37, still young enough to pick up the pieces and move on.

Much, we think, like Mr Stephen Fray, the 21-year-old who was sent to prison for 20 years for attempting to hijack a Canadian jet at the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay last April.

We remember how inconsolable his friends and family were when that sentence was passed.

They couldn’t see a worthwhile life beyond the 20 years for the young Mr Fray. The sentence was way too long, wicked even, they argued.

Indeed, this space was pilloried for suggesting that the sentence was not necessarily to be equated with the end of the world.

However, at the risk of incurring more anger, we are going to highlight what we think is the palpable irony of these sad situations.

For we’re talking about two obviously troubled young men who’ll be in their late 30s and early 40s when they get out.

What basis is there for arguing that life will go on for one, but be all but over for the other?

Won’t they both be subjected to similar programmes of rehabilitation — if we can really call them that — based on their respective needs?

Shouldn’t the primary focus of the sentence be on protecting the public from the risk that these men have shown that they can pose to the society?

And, if that is so, is 20 years enough in either case?

Can we rest assured that after spending 20 or 30 or even 40 years in the prison system these men will be fit for reintegration into civil society, that they will not represent a risk to the safety of the public then?

We are in sympathy with the parents of the young Mr Scott, on account of the loss of their child. And we don’t presume to be able to imagine the grief that his mother, Ms Andria Folkes, will continue to feel for the rest of her life over the murder of her only child.

Unlike the Frays and the family of Mr Levy, who will get their boys — or more accurately, men — back, Mr Scott and Ms Folkes never see their son again in this life.

They will have to serve the terrible sentence of grief and misery that Mr Levy imposed on them in September of 2008, to their dying day.

As far as punishments go, this exceeds any prison sentence that falls short of life.

Or, for that matter, death.