‘An Obligation of Means, Not One of Result’: A Historical Overview and Theoretical Assessment of the Whole Life Order Sentencing Regime in England and Wales

In England and Wales, a ‘whole life order’ (WLO) is a life sentence with no prospect of parole. At present, the WLO sentencing regime provides insufficient clarity about the assessment criteria for the release of prisoners, rendering these sentences unreviewable. Indeed, no WLO prisoner has ever been released. This article submits that it is the means by which the executive and courts preclude scrutiny of the WLO review mechanism, and so devalue the systemic health of our legal order by undermining rule of law principles of accountability and transparency, which form the most disquieting aspects of the regime. I set out my argument in two parts. Part One provides a historical assessment of the development of the WLO sentencing regime and its impact on wider human rights discourse. A critical evaluation of this history reveals that WLOs today are irreducible and underscored by the long-term accumulation of unaccountable executive power. Part Two considers WLOs from the position of the philosopher John Rawls’ theory of ‘political liberalism’ as applied to understandings of European human rights constitutionalism. Adapting Rawls’ emphasis on the importance of reciprocal deliberation between diverse citizens and institutions in maintaining a just and stable society, this article presents the deficiencies of the WLO regime as deriving from an inter-institutional failure to engage in meaningful deliberation about whether the WLO regime complies with the UK's human rights obligations. I propose reforms to the reviewability of WLO sentences to give prisoners the ‘means’ if not necessarily the ‘result’ of release. Rather, there remain outstanding questions about how many of the worst of the worst prisoners possess the capacity for rehabilitation, even if provided with the opportunities to do so. As such, these reforms can be justified, less on grounds of ensuring the actual release of prisoners, but more as part of restoring a broader functional human rights and rule of law framework.