Why whole-life imprisonment is rising in England and Wales

By Jake Phillips, Associate professor, University of Cambridge
Hannah Gilman, Lecturer, Arden University

In England and Wales, whole-life imprisonment is the harshest sanction available to the courts, emerging in the decades after the abolition of the death penalty. The whole-life order requires people to spend their whole lives in prison with no prospect of release, except on exceptional compassionate grounds.

From 1988, whole-life sentences (called “whole-life tariffs”) could be imposed by the home secretary and were used for handful of criminals. However, a number of legal challenges in the 1990s chipped away at the home secretary’s power to do so. In 2003, the Criminal Justice Act…

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