A
whole life order (formerly known as a
whole life tariff) is a court order whereby a prisoner who is being sentenced to
life imprisonment is ordered to serve that sentence without any possibility of parole or conditional release. This order may be made in cases of aggravated murders committed by anyone who was aged 21 or above at the time of the crime; or where the offender was aged between 18 and 20 if the Court considers that the seriousness of the offence, or combination of offences, is exceptionally high even by the standard of offences which would normally result in a whole-life order where the offender is aged 21 or over. The purpose of a whole-life order is for a prisoner to spend the rest of their life in prison, although they may still be released on compassionate grounds (see
compassionate release) or pardoned by the monarch, within the
royal prerogative of mercy – namely in the event of great age or ill health. Since the abolition of the death penalty in 1965, it is the most serious criminal penalty that can be imposed for any crime in the United Kingdom. A whole-life order can also be quashed on appeal by the
Court of Appeal; a number of prisoners have had their sentences reduced by this method. From 1983, the home secretary had the right to decide how long a life-sentence prisoner should serve before being considered for parole, and the trial judge was not obliged to recommend when or if an offender should be considered for parole. In some cases, the trial judge had recommended that a life-sentence prisoner should at some point be considered for parole, only for the home secretary to later impose a whole life order, while in other cases the trial judge recommended that a life sentence prisoner should never be released, only for a Home Secretary or the High Court to later rule that they could be considered for parole after serving a specified minimum sentence. The question of whether a home secretary or any of the other appropriate authorities should have the power to impose whole life orders was a controversial one, since a decision to impose such a sanction (or not) could carry political consequences for the home secretary and, by extension, the government they served – as well as a backlash by the national media. Perhaps the most notable example is
Myra Hindley, sentenced to life in prison in 1966 for her role in the
Moors Murders. Her trial judge recommended that she should serve a minimum of 25 years before being considered for parole. However, this was later increased to 30 years and in 1990 to "whole life" by
David Waddington. Supporters of her campaign for parole, most notably
Lord Longford and
David Astor, argued that she was being kept in prison by successive home secretaries afraid of going against public opinion. She died in November 2002, having never managed to win parole; on three occasions she had appealed against the Home Office's ruling that she should never be released, but each of these appeals failed. The introduction of the government's tariff-setting procedures in 1983 also came shortly after a number of widely reported murder convictions, which sparked public and media fears that the convicted murderers could be paroled within the next decade or so. That year had seen the arrest and conviction of
Dennis Nilsen, who was jailed for life for murdering 11 young men whose dismembered bodies were found at the two flats he had rented in
North London. Two years earlier, "Yorkshire Ripper"
Peter Sutcliffe had been found guilty of murdering 13 women and attacking seven others in a six-year spree. Both killers were later issued with whole life tariffs and remained in prison until their deaths; Nielsen dying in 2018 after 35 years in prison, and Sutcliffe in 2020 after serving almost 40 years in various prisons and mental hospitals. In 1976,
Donald "Black Panther" Neilson was convicted on four charges of murder at the end of a highly publicised trial. He too was subjected to a whole-life order by subsequent home secretaries, with the final decision on his sentencing coming in 2008 when the High Court reaffirmed the decision. Like Nilsen and Sutcliffe, Neilson remained in prison until his death, dying in 2011 after serving 35 years of his life sentence. In November 2002, a successful legal challenge by convicted double murderer
Anthony Anderson saw the home secretary stripped of the final say on how long a life sentence prisoner must serve before parole can be considered, including the right to decide that certain prisoners should never be released. This ruling had been anticipated for several months, and was delivered just over a week after the death of Hindley, who had been widely expected to gain immediate parole in the event of the home secretary's being stripped of these sentencing powers. A year later, the
Criminal Justice Act 2003 was passed requiring that the trial judge recommend the minimum number of years to be served (or order that life should mean life) in the case of anyone being sentenced to life imprisonment. As had been the case when the home secretary could determine when or if a life sentence prisoner could be considered for parole, prisoners were entitled to have their sentence reviewed by the
High Court. These prisoners can also appeal to the
European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) if their appeals to the High Court are unsuccessful. In June 1997, the High Court had already stripped the home secretary of the power to decide on minimum terms for life-sentence prisoners who were convicted before the age of 18, following a legal challenge by solicitors acting for Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. The pair had been found guilty of murdering
Merseyside toddler
James Bulger in 1993, when they were 11 years old. The trial judge's initial recommendation was that they should not be considered for parole for at least eight years. The Lord Chief Justice later ruled that the pair should serve a minimum sentence of 10 years, but following a petition by
The Sun newspaper, Home Secretary
Michael Howard had ruled during 1994 that the pair should not be released until they had spent at least 15 years in custody. Many prisoners have also received minimum sentences that are expected to keep them imprisoned for most if not all of their remaining lives, such as child killer
Roy Whiting, who was convicted of child murder and received a 40-year minimum term, which means that he cannot apply for parole until he is at least 82. Whiting's trial judge had originally recommended that life should mean life and just before the High Court stripped politicians of their sentencing powers in November 2002, Home Secretary David Blunkett set Whiting's minimum term at 50 years, which was effectively a whole-life order as it meant that he could apply for parole only if he lived to be at least 92. Whiting lodged an appeal against this ruling to the High Court, and the order was reduced to a 40-year minimum term, meaning that Whiting could be considered for parole from 2041 and the age of 82. Another child killer, Ian Huntley,
murdered two 10-year-old girls in August 2002, but by the time he was convicted 16 months later, the home secretary had been stripped of powers to set minimum terms for life sentence prisoners, and that decision was instead left to the High Court. His 40-year minimum sentence would have kept him imprisoned until 2042 and the age of 68; however, Huntley died in 2026 after being attacked in prison. Between 1997 and 2000, Myra Hindley made three appeals against the ruling that life should mean life in her case, but each was unsuccessful. The appropriate authorities initially agreed with the 25-year-minimum term suggested by the trial judge, but was later increased to 30 years by the home secretary in the mid-1980s and then to "whole life" by successive home secretaries from 1990. She remained in prison until her death in November 2002, 36 years after she was sentenced. Her campaign for parole was supported by
Lord Longford and
David Astor, who claimed that she was a reformed character who had merely acted as Brady's accomplice under duress, and had completely changed once removed from his influence. Her supporters also claimed that successive home secretaries refused to authorise her release from prison in order to win votes. However, there was widespread public and media objection to Hindley ever being paroled. She received numerous death threats from members of the public – including the relatives of some of the Moors Murders victims – who vowed to kill her if she was ever released from prison. The public and media doubt as to whether Hindley's remorse was genuine was further fuelled by the fact that Hindley had waited 20 years before making a full confession. This for many further strengthened the suggestion that the reported turnaround in her life while in prison was nothing more than a ploy to boost her chances of parole.
Ian Brady, who committed the Moors murders with Hindley, was also told by a succession of home secretaries that his life sentence should mean life, but unlike Hindley he never attempted to gain parole, and insisted he never wanted to be released from custody. In 1999, he made an unsuccessful legal challenge to be allowed to starve himself to death. He died in May 2017 after more than 50 years in prison, and was Britain's longest-serving prisoner. Prior to 2022, the law provided that whole-life orders could be issued to anyone under the age of 21 at the time of their crime, although there had never been a previous case of a whole-life order being imposed or recommended to someone who committed their crime before the age of 21. The
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 amended the
Sentencing Code to allow a court to issue whole-life orders to defendants aged over 18 but under 21 at the time of their offence, but only if the court considers that the seriousness of the offence, or combination of offences, is exceptionally high even by the standard of offences which would normally result in a whole life order. A number of prisoners who are unlikely ever to be released or have received very long sentences have declared their wish to die; for example, Ian Brady. At least two such inmates have committed suicide in prison,
Harold Shipman and
Daniel Gonzalez, and there have been attempted suicides by such prisoners, including
Ian Huntley. A number have died in prison as a result of ill health, including Myra Hindley and Donald Neilson. Whole-life sentences have also been criticised in some quarters for giving offenders no incentive to behave well and co-operate with prison staff, or make any serious attempt at rehabilitation. An example of this was highlighted by the case of
Robert Maudsley, sentenced to life for a single murder in 1975, who went on to kill three inmates several years into his sentence. The late Victor Castgador also went on to kill again in prison. A number of other such prisoners have committed serious assaults on other prisoners and staff. These include Mark Hobson, Gary Vinter and Damien Bendall.
Release Section 30(1) of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 provides that the
home secretary may at any time release a life prisoner on licence if satisfied that exceptional circumstances exist that justify the prisoner’s release on compassionate grounds. A prisoner can then be released early when criteria such as great age, injury, disability or ill health are met; this has resulted in several life-sentence prisoners being granted early release a considerable length of time before the date when they could first apply for parole. Only the home secretary can grant a release to a prisoner sentenced to a whole-life order on compassionate grounds including great age or ill health. Only four prisoners known or believed to have been issued with a whole-life order have so far been released from their sentences. Three of them were
IRA members who were freed under the
Good Friday Agreement in 1999, having spent more than 20 years in prison for terrorist offences including murder. The other was gang member
Reggie Kray, who was freed from his life sentence in August 2000 after serving 32 years (two years after the expiry of his original 30-year minimum term) due to terminal cancer; although the Home Office never confirmed that he had been issued with a whole-life order, his lengthy imprisonment and the fact that he was not paroled when his tariff expired (despite being well into his sixties) fuelled speculation that he was among the prisoners who had been issued with a whole-life order. He died a few weeks after being freed.
Legal challenges against whole-life orders Three convicted murderers –
Jeremy Bamber,
Peter Moore and
Douglas Vinter, all of whom had been sentenced to whole-life orders – applied to the
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for the court to declare that it is a breach of a person's rights under
Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights for them to be sentenced to lifelong imprisonment. When the initial ruling was delivered in January 2012, the court ruled that because the whole-life orders were imposed by a judge only after consideration of the facts of each case, and because the life prisoners could apply to the home secretary for compassionate release, their whole-life orders did not breach their human rights. A later appeal by the same men led to a ruling in July 2013 that there must be a prospect of review of whole life orders within 25 years of the sentence being issued, and that any impossibility of parole would violate their Article 3 rights. By this stage there were at least 49 prisoners serving such sentences in England and Wales. In February 2014, five judges at the
Court of Appeal found the Strasbourg court was incorrect in concluding that the law of England and Wales never allowed whole-life orders to be reduced because the
Secretary of State could reduce such orders in "exceptional circumstances", and that all "whole-life" prisoners would be entitled to a review of their sentence within 25 years of being sentenced. The whole-life order in the United Kingdom is therefore in fact not really life imprisonment without parole, but it is close to it.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas said whole life orders were compatible with the
European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in the most appalling cases of murder. Thomas said further, "Judges should therefore continue as they have done to impose whole-life orders in those rare and exceptional cases. ... In our judgment the law of England and Wales therefore does provide to an offender 'hope' or the 'possibility' of release in exceptional circumstances which render the just punishment originally imposed no longer justifiable." Barrister
Edward Fitzgerald said that whole-life prisoners since 2014 "are in a sort of limbo. In legal theory they have the right to a review after say 25 or 30 years in the light of their progress. But in actual practice there is no recognition of this fact in any policy statement by the Secretary for Justice and no real means of knowing what it is they must do to win release even after decades in custody". In February 2015, the ECtHR upheld the lawfulness of whole-life orders, on the ground that they can be reviewed in exceptional circumstances, following a fresh challenge by murderer
Arthur Hutchinson, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for a triple murder in
Sheffield more than 30 years earlier. Another legal challenge to the court by Hutchinson was rejected in January 2017. By this stage, there were believed to be more than 70 prisoners in England and Wales serving whole-life sentences. ==References==