CALL TO REVIEW 'WHOLE LIFE' TERMS
Prisoners serving "whole life" sentences should be able to apply for a review by the Parole Board after 25 years, peers said today.
Former lord justice of appeal Lord Lloyd of Berwick said the change was justified on practical and humanitarian grounds.
"All we are seeking to do is to restore to these prisoners a right which they have lost for no apparent reason," he said.
Lord Lloyd said prisoners serving 20 or 30 years were entitled to a review after completing their "tariffs" giving them "light at the end of the tunnel" and a "reason for making progress".
But he said this didn't apply to prisoners serving "whole life" sentences and it couldn't be right to deprive them of this right for "symbolic reasons".
The independent crossbench peer was backing an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill which was also supported by Liberal Democrat QC Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames.
He said: "A whole life tariff without the prospect of review is incompatible with a humane approach, a human rights based approach, to punishment."
One of the primary purposes of punishment was rehabilitation and to impose a whole life order without any hope of release on "rehabilitation grounds" was incompatible with that purpose.
Lord Marks said the offender should know when being sentenced that there was some prospect that "in exceptional circumstances there will be a power to enable their release other than on purely compassionate grounds".
It was understandable that in the "most heinous crimes" the purpose of rehabilitation came "low down the list".
But he warned: "The absence of any possibility of review except on compassionate grounds .... removes hope completely in a way that is inhumane."
The call for a right of review after 25 years came after the court of appeal ruled earlier this year that British judges can continue to impose "whole life" prison sentences in the most heinous cases of murder.
The appeal judges confirmed that a European court of human rights ruling last year that such sentences needed to be reviewed at some stage does not prevent murderers being sent to prison for the rest of their lives in the most serious cases.
