Life imprisonment
Other countries that do not practice life sentences include Mongolia in Asia and Norway, Iceland, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Andorra and Montenegro in Europe.
Where life imprisonment is a possible sentence, there may also exist formal mechanisms for requesting parole after a certain period of prison time.
In the United States, James Holmes, the perpetrator of the 2012 Aurora theater shooting, received 12 consecutive life sentences plus 3,318 years without the possibility of parole.
A few countries allow for a minor to be given a life sentence without parole; these include but are not limited to: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina (only over the age of 16),[7] Australia, Belize, Brunei, Cuba, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, and the United States.
[8] In 2009, Human Rights Watch estimated that there were 2,589 youth offenders serving life sentences without the possibility for parole in the U.S.[9][10] Since the start of 2020, that number has fallen to 1,465.
[15][16][19] Serbia previously had a maximum prison sentence of 40 years; life imprisonment was instated in 2019 by amendments to the country's criminal code, alongside a three-strikes law.
In Italy, persons who refuse to cooperate with authorities and are sentenced for mafia activities or terrorism are ineligible for parole and thus will spend the rest of their lives in prison.
In France, while the law does not expressly provide for life imprisonment without any possibility of parole, a court can rule in exceptionally serious circumstances that convicts are ineligible for automatic parole consideration after 30 years if convicted of child murder involving rape or torture, premeditated murder of a state official or terrorism resulting in death.
[24] In Albania, while no person sentenced to life imprisonment is eligible for standard parole, a conditional release is still possible if the prisoner is found not likely to re-offend and has displayed good behaviour, and has served at least 25 years.
Before 2016 in the Netherlands, there was never a possibility of parole for any person sentenced to life imprisonment, and any form of release for life convicted in the country was only possible when granted royal decree by the King of the Netherlands, with the last granting of a pardon taking place in 1986 when a terminally ill convict was released.
This change in law was because the European Court of Human Rights stated in 2013 that lifelong imprisonment without the chance of being released is inhuman.
In South and Central America, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic have all abolished life imprisonment.
First degree murder and high treason carry the longest period of parole ineligibility in the Criminal Code, at 25 years.
A statutory amendment to allow periods of parole ineligibility greater than 25 years was held to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada in R v Bissonnette (2022 SCC 23), as contrary to section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Miller v. Alabama in a 5–4 decision and with the majority opinion written by Associate Justice Elena Kagan that mandatory sentences of life in prison without parole for juvenile offenders are unconstitutional.
The majority opinion stated that barring a judge from considering mitigating factors and other information, such as age, maturity, and family and home environment violated the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Sentences of life in prison without parole can still be given to juveniles for aggravated first-degree murder, as long as the judge considers the circumstances of the case.
Pope Francis called for the abolition of both capital punishment and life imprisonment in a meeting with representatives of the International Association of Penal Law.
