Britain’s “lifer” population outnumbers the rest of the EU’s
The UK has more prisoners serving life sentences than the whole of the rest of the EU put together, a leading penal charity has warned.
The Prison Reform Trust has claimed that the number of “lifers” in England and Wales’ prisons is nearly 5,500 – compared to 5,268 in the rest of the EU, at the end of 2002.
The England and Wales figure, the PRT also alleges, is the highest for any of the 45 member states of the Council of Europe. The next highest population is seen in Turkey, with 1,746.
The Trust, in an article in its magazine, Prison Report, puts this down to a change in sentencing structure – notably, the introduction of mandatory life sentences for murder.
The Trust’s director, Juliet Lyons, declared, “This dramatic jump in the number of people serving life sentences has nothing to do with stable crime rates and everything to do with the increased use of mandatory penalties and a growing emphasis on retribution.”
The PRT’s report claims that as at November 30 last year, there were 5,475 “lifers” in England and Wales – 5,305 men and 170 women.
