I dont agree with this approach. I believe that as the world, especially the third world, progresses towards socialism, there will be massive reactionary movements taking place. And many of these reactionaries will be extremely harmful to the general societal progress and well-being, trying to forment hatred and overthrow the government. And its a practical guarantee tha Western interests will try to leverage these reactionary movements
In such cases, especially for poorer countries, imprisonment for life is wasting of societal resources that should've gone to the working class rather than the parasites who actively tried to harm the workers by betraying the proletariat class.
In fact, keeping them alive adds more fuel to the reactionary movements instead of cutting the head of the serpent.
I've seen this far too often, where reactionaries will have no moral code, and the revolutionary sentiments will fall flat because "we can't protect our class interests, or we will be just like them" so the reactionaries always win