Life imprisonment has replaced capital punishment as the most common sentence imposed for heinous crimes worldwide. As a consequence, it has become the leading issue in international criminal justice reform. In the first global survey of prisoners serving life terms, Dirk van Zyl Smit and Catherine Appleton argue for a human rights-based reappraisal of this exceptionally harsh punishment. The authors estimate that nearly half a million people face life behind bars, and the number is growing as jurisdictions both abolish death sentences and impose life sentences more freely for crimes that would never have attracted capital punishment. Life Imprisonment explores this trend through systematic data collection and legal analysis, persuasively illustrated by detailed maps, charts, tables, and comprehensive statistical appendices.
The central question-can life sentences be just?-is straightforward, but the answer is complicated by the vast range of penal practices that fall under the umbrella of life imprisonment. Van Zyl Smit and Appleton contend that life imprisonment without possibility of parole can never be just. While they have some sympathy for the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, they conclude that life imprisonment, in many of the ways it is implemented worldwide, infringes on the requirements of justice. They also examine the outliers-states that have no life imprisonment-to highlight the possibility of abolishing life sentences entirely.
Life Imprisonment is an incomparable resource for lawyers, lawmakers, criminologists, policy scholars, and penal-reform advocates concerned with balancing justice and public safety.
Life imprisonment has replaced capital punishment as the most common sentence imposed for heinous crimes worldwide. As a consequence, it has become the leading issue in international criminal justice reform. In the first global survey of prisoners serving life terms, Dirk van Zyl Smit and Catherine Appleton argue for a human rights-based reappraisal of this exceptionally harsh punishment. The authors estimate that nearly half a million people face life behind bars, and the number is growing as jurisdictions both abolish death sentences and impose life sentences more freely for crimes that would never have attracted capital punishment. Life Imprisonment explores this trend through systematic data collection and legal analysis, persuasively illustrated by detailed maps, charts, tables, and comprehensive statistical appendices.
The central question-can life sentences be just?-is straightforward, but the answer is complicated by the vast range of penal practices that fall under the umbrella of life imprisonment. Van Zyl Smit and Appleton contend that life imprisonment without possibility of parole can never be just. While they have some sympathy for the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, they conclude that life imprisonment, in many of the ways it is implemented worldwide, infringes on the requirements of justice. They also examine the outliers-states that have no life imprisonment-to highlight the possibility of abolishing life sentences entirely.
Life Imprisonment is an incomparable resource for lawyers, lawmakers, criminologists, policy scholars, and penal-reform advocates concerned with balancing justice and public safety.
Dirk van Zyl Smit is Professor of Comparative and International Penal Law at the University of Nottingham. Catherine Appleton is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Law at the University of Nottingham.
Part treatise, part worldwide empirical investigation, and part
normative argument, Life Imprisonment is a tour de force. It shines
bright light on a legislatively prescribed and judicially imposed
sentence that, remarkably, has drawn practically no scholarly
attention. Until now. For the foreseeable future this book will
stand as the definitive source of information on and critique of
the most serious punishment practically all countries regularly
impose.
*James B. Jacobs, New York University School of Law*
The authors have succeeded magnificently in weaving a vast array of
materials into an authoritative text. Years of network building,
data collection, fact checking, and interpretation have enabled
them to make a major contribution to a pressing area of criminal
law. This humane and important book will become the touchstone for
scholars of extreme punishment.
*Ian O’Donnell, University College Dublin School of Law*
Van Zyl Smit and Appleton have provided the first comprehensive
study of the most common form of harsh punishment in the world
today: the penal life sentence. For the first time research on this
crucial topic can move on a comparative basis. This volume is an
essential resource for the libraries of penal reformers, human
rights lawyers, and students everywhere of comparative law,
punishment, and society.
*Jonathan Simon, University of California Berkeley School of
Law*
Will inspire and influence scholars and public policy advocates
everywhere…This excellent book is in a class by itself.
*Choice*
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