Abstract
Life Imprisonment: A Global Human Rights Analysis is an exemplary exercise of wide-scale comparative scholarly research. In 11 substantive chapters and with surgical precision, Van Zyl Smit and Appleton describe national trends within international legal frames to produce a transnational, accessible, and conceptually engaging socio-legal analysis of life imprisonment in the world.
The book makes two main contributions: it delineates a problematic quantitative phenomenon and evaluates its acceptability against human rights principles. To achieve this, the authors had to first overcome a definitional hurdle: what does life imprisonment actually mean? In penal policies, life imprisonment tends to be systematically described as a contrast to the death penalty rather than on its own terms. The absence of a typology for life sentences and the diffusion of notions to describe the punishment in the criminological lexicon (e.g. de facto death sentence, virtual death sentence, death-in-prison) further attests the great complexity to grasp the contours of life sentence imprisonment. Van Zyl Smit and Appleton define life imprisonment as ‘a sentence, following a criminal conviction, which gives the state the power to detain a person in prison for life, that is, until they die there.’ (2019: 35)
The last 30 years have seen a remarkable global increase in the number people serving life sentences, and an important international scholarship has developed to expose this troubling phenomena (Annison, 2018; Appleton and Grøver, 2006; Lecuyer, 2010; Miao, 2016; Nellis, 2017; Seeds, 2017; Smith and Jiang, 2019; Vannier, 2019). In analysing the legal systems of over 200 countries and collecting data from 114 nations, Life Imprisonment provides a unique global account of the prevalence of life imprisonment. Other than the usual US/EU outliers, the book reveals that India holds the second largest number of life-sentenced prisoners (71,632), and South Africa has a life-sentenced population of 22.7 per 100,000. While data are missing for the most populated countries in Asia, including China, Vietnam and the Philippines, and information from the Middle East remain patchy, the authors estimate that there are approximately 479,000 persons serving life sentences in the world in 2014 (excluding informal life sentences) and trends reveal a steady growth.
While life sentences are increasing, there are marked international differences not just in how long a life sentence is, but in how those deemed the most dangerous have been treated by their respective prison systems. The book deepens our understanding of variation in this penal practice by evaluating life imprisonment’s acceptability against human rights. A human rights approach has at its core the idea that all persons, including the most serious offenders, are entitled to be treated with dignity. Dignity ensures that life sentences are proportionate to the crime, recognizes prisoners’ right to challenge inhumane treatments, and gives emphasis to the humanitarian value of rehabilitation. This frame is applied to critically examine the scope and imposition of life sentences, and their implementation behind prison walls.
Some countries prohibit the imposition of life sentences for women, children and in some jurisdictions, the elderly, which raises important questions about the justifications for these exclusions. While life sentences should only be imposed for the most serious forms of crimes, the book reveals that some nations impose life imprisonment for crimes against property (theft or arson), for crimes against public order (piracy or corruption), and for drug and sex crimes. The processes underpinning the imposition of life sentences are complex and multi-layered. The book’s analysis is particularly compelling for its nuanced attention to the forms of mandatory restraints and extent of discretionary power courts retain across the world. The conservation of the humanitarian principle of proportionality becomes uncertain where such periods are extended by releasing authorities and may be undermined by the part played by other criminal justice actors, such as prosecutors, victims and expert witnesses.
In building a bridge between discussions on sentencing laws (Ashworth and Zedner, 2019; Van Zyl Smit and Snacken, 2009), and empirical investigations on the experience of life imprisonment (Crawley and Sparks, 2005; Crewe et al., 2020, 2017; Leigey, 2015; Vannier, 2016), the book further illuminates the exceptional severity of the punishment. The widespread use of heightened security measures, the limited access to rehabilitative opportunities, and the restriction on material conditions and human contact together impoverish the treatments afforded to life-sentenced prisoners and exacerbate the pains of life imprisonment. Countries systems should provide, at a minimum, individualized sentence planning, normalized prison regime, and meaningful activities for prisoners sentenced to life. Prison regimes, the authors further recommend, should refrain from adding restrictions on life-sentenced prisons merely on the basis of their punishment. To abide by human rights principles overall, developing respectful and dignified staff–prisoner relationships is of essence.
At the risk of disturbing proportionality-based court decisions and prolonging the pains of life imprisonment, releasing authorities can decide to prolong the duration of life sentences. These authorities controversially include executive agencies. The ageing of the prison population raises another urgent question with respect to releases: why are not all life-sentenced individuals—and, in particular, the elderly who have served a significant number of years in prison—systematically eligible to review for release based on human dignity? Greater academic attention to life after life imprisonment is also needed (Appleton, 2010). The conditions under which life-sentenced individuals are released include wide-ranging restrictions that, if violated, can lead to reincarceration. Reconviction rates of released life-sentenced prisoners remain, however, low in most countries, despite the number of barriers lifers face when reintegrating societies, and the procedurally unfair nature of recalling systems across the world.
In measuring the acceptability of life imprisonment against human rights, Van Zyl Smit and Appleton make a strong case for abolishing life without parole and for reducing life sentences. The meaning of “acceptability” in criminal justice systems seems significant but remains elusive. It pre-empts, albeit in imperceptible ways, the introduction of punitive treatments (Garland, 1991: 214). In its sociological sense, acceptability refers to people’s views on severity and, as such, is a rather a nebulous phenomenon to research. Studies could turn to opinion poll data, notwithstanding that these only capture some, mostly predominant and oft deeply racialised, views (Brown, 2006); or focus on how penal reforms shape perceptions (Vannier, 2019). A third way to explore life imprisonment’s acceptability focuses on the behaviours and practices of specific criminal justice actors who are key in the imposition and implementation of life sentences. Acknowledging that their actions and interactions are shaped by beliefs, power dynamics, and norms, the acceptability of life imprisonment becomes observable in sentencing decisions and custodial regimes. These practices embody, enact, and reproduce perceptions of severity, and ultimately delineate the contours of a punishment’s acceptability. This approach to acceptability carries implications for human rights evaluations. It would uncover how humanitarian injunctions are “translated” locally, namely how they are given meaning, learned, and sustained (on “translation,” Lascoumes, 2014). Criminal justice agents and the institutions in which they operate may be constrained by dignity but their practices may not be characterised by it (on the value of “respect,” Watson, 2020). This bottom-up approach would essentially expose the sociological indeterminacy of life imprisonment’s acceptability and contribute to building a separate sociology of life imprisonment.
