Is there any point in rehabilitating prisoners sentenced to ‘whole life’ tariffs, who will die in custody? Today’s announcement banning such prisoners from a fundamental human right – to get married – would suggest the state thinks there isn’t.
This act, contained in an innocuous statutory instrument is a rare example of retribution in action. We don’t hear much about revenge in our criminal justice discourse these days – that, after all, is the less pretty descriptor for one of the three main aims of imprisonment. Society takes revenge for harm done on the part of the individual because crime is a societal hurt. This is the reason why such trials are styled as Rex or Regina vs the alleged perpetrator. By convention, these are crimes against the King.
The people we are talking of here have, by their despicable actions, sealed their own fate
There are estimated to be around 70 prisoners serving a ‘whole life’ tariff in England and Wales. These sentences are given to offenders who have committed grave and heinous crimes and they include serial killers, rapists and terrorists. Not exactly a roll call of eligible suitors but you would be surprised – or maybe not – at the cachet of people whose wickedness and cruelty seems an aphrodisiac.
Charles Bronson, a prisoner I remember meeting in the segregation unit of HMP Durham twenty years ago is not a whole life prisoner. Nevertheless, in prison for 50 years and recently denied parole, at the age of 71 he enjoys the reputation of one of the most violent men in prison to the extent that a film was made of his life starring Tom Hardy. He may well die inside too.
Bronson has been married three times, twice in prison, including once to a soap star. He has caused untold psychological and physical harm to many victims, including a prison teacher he took hostage. Each time he got hitched, the prison service had to explain to the press that the only grounds for stopping the ceremony, not the act, was if there was a security risk. The European convention on human rights guaranteed his right to marriage and I believe he exploited this right to the full with women he had only developed a relationship with through supervised visits, letters and the odd phone call. Cue a media pantomime.
These nuptials will now no longer be available to a small but growing number of offenders who will only leave prison in a stretcher, terminally ill, or in a box. They include Michael Adebolajo, the terrorist murderer of Fusilier Lee Rigby, the serial killer Rose West and the kidnap/rapist police killer Wayne Cousins. Why anyone would consider marrying people capable of such grotesque and callous harm is a question for another day. But should the state have the power to deny them a fundamental human right?
The right to marriage is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, specifically article 8 and within article 12 – these are the right to marriage and the right to privacy and a family life. But these are not absolute rights – they are qualified to allow states to deviate providing there is a legitimate and proportionate reason for doing so. The European court which adjudicates on these matters (and in whose jurisdiction we remain) has left it open to states to ban marriage in prison in specific circumstances. This is the wiggle room that has allowed the UK government to act specifically in terms of those whose crimes have outraged society. The King’s speech in 2023 committed the government to extending whole life orders to those convicted of murder where there was a sexual or sadistic component. Stand by for an increase in the number of people who have been given this civil ‘death sentence’.
It’s also worth considering the impact of depriving people who have nothing left to lose but many years to live out behind bars. I’m not talking about morality here – though that has it’s place, more of the practicalities of safely managing sometimes extremely violent people who continue to have the potential to harm other prisoners or staff. Robert Maudsley, who is serving a whole life sentence, murdered four people, three of them in custody. He has been kept in solitary confinement for years in a specially protected cell. Managing people who have lost all hope is a very, very tricky business. Deprivation of one of the few rights left to them will add to that risk. What are you going to do? Send them to prison?
But on balance, the government is absolutely correct to act as it has. The people we are talking of here have, by their despicable actions, sealed their own fate. They are irredeemable. The harm they have committed is so heinous that the state must make it impossible for them to exploit marriage and retraumatise bereaved citizens who would be forced to endure the desecration of a sacred office that is forever denied to their dead loved ones. Sometimes a line is crossed in civilised behaviour from which there should be no return. This is definitely one of them.
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