© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org 597 doi:10.1093/bjc/azm001 BRIT. J. CRIMINOL. (2007) 47, 597–615 Advance Access publication 24 April 2007 THE PROS AND CONS OF LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE Catherine Appleton and Bent Grøver* The question of how societies should respond to their most serious crimes if not with the death pen- alty is ‘perhaps the oldest of all the issues raised by the two-century struggle in western civilization to end the death penalty’ (Bedau, 1990: 481). In this article we draw attention to the rapid and extraordinary increase in the use of ‘life imprisonment without parole’ in the United States. We aim to critically assess the main arguments put forward by supporters of whole life imprisonment as a punishment provided by law to replace the death penalty and argue against life-long detention as the ultimate sanction. Introduction What is it that makes for the singularity of the death penalty? It is irreversible, but so is mutilation; it is a severe punishment, but so is torture or a life sentence. It involves the denial of dignity, but so, for all intents and purposes, does a life sentence: a human life involves not just existence and survival, but the unique development of a personality, creativity, liberty, unfettered social intercourse. When these are denied, can those who, in the name of civil rights, are in the forefront of the struggle against the death penalty ignore the ultimate implications of a life sentence? (Sheleff 1987: 138). The rapid abolition of the death penalty throughout much of the western world during the latter half of the twentieth century was undoubtedly ‘one of the signal achievements of liberal idealism’ (van Zyl Smit 2001: 299). However, as the Israeli criminologist Leon Sheleff (1987) has recognized, few abolitionists have confronted themselves with the total implications of life imprisonment as an alternative punishment to the death pen- alty. Rather, death penalty supporters and opponents alike have often assumed that the alternative to execution should be to put murderers behind bars for the rest of their lives. In recent decades in the United States, there has been a rapid proliferation of life imprisonment without parole sentences for both adult and juvenile offenders, and also mandatory life sentences for recidivists and for drug offences. Recent trends in the United Kingdom appear equally unpromising. Although England and Wales has long since ceased the execution of offenders, it has surpassed all of Western Europe in its use of life imprisonment (Creighton 2004). Moreover, the recently enacted Criminal Justice Act 2003 has extended the scope of life imprisonment to include whole-life imprison- ment as the maximum penalty. The resultant picture is of life imprisonment imposed more often and enforced for longer periods. Despite the abandonment of capital punishment, as well as the fact that only a small proportion of homicides in the United States result in execution (Hood 2002), the rise in the use of life imprisonment without the possibility of release has received very little * Correspondence to Catherine Appleton, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford, Manor Road Building, Manor Road, Oxford OX1 3UQ , UK ; catherine.appleton@crim.ox.ac.uk. Bent Grøver, sF, Nordslettveien 4B, 7038 Trondheim, Norway; bent@s-f.cc. at East Tennessee State University on June 12, 2015 http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from