Abstract
A sentence of life imprisonment is mandatory where an offender commits the crime of murder and at the time of doing so is aged 21 years or over.1 At the same time as imposing such a penalty the sentencing judge has a discretionary power to make a recommendation to the Home Secretary that the offender should serve a minimum period of time in custody before being released.2 Life imprisonment is also the maximum sentence which may be imposed for a number of other serious offences such as manslaughter, robbery, rape, aggravated burglary and arson.
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Notes
D. Smith (ed.), Life-Sentence Prisoners Home Office Research Study No.51. 1979. London: H.M.S.O. at p.9.
Roger Sapsford, Life-Sentence Prisoners 1983, Milton Keynes Open University Press. p.16.
M.Fitzgerald and J. Sim, British Prisons, 1982. Oxford, Basil Blackwell.
John Staples, The Management of Life Sentence Prisoners April 1981, Prison Service Journal, 4 at p. 6.
Maguire M., Pinter, F. and Collis C., ‘Dangerousness and the Tariff’ (1984), British Journal of Criminology 24 (3), pp. 250–68.
J. B. Coker and J. P. Martin, Licensed to Live, 1985, Oxford, Basil Blackwell.
John McVicar, McVicar by Himself (1979) London: Hutchinson, at pp. 48, 49.
Stan Cohen and Laurie Taylor, Psychological Survival. The Experience of Long-Term Imprisonment, 1981. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
J. H. Orr, ‘Medical Aspects of the Treatment and Management of Prisoners Serving Sentences of Life Imprisonment’, Prison Medical Journal, Spring 1981, pp. 2–6.
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© 1990 Barry Mitchell
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Mitchell, B. (1990). Life Imprisonment: Policy and Practice. In: Murder and Penal Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20745-9_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20745-9_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-49639-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-20745-9
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