Vinter v UK - The Right to Hope and the Whole Life Tariff

The case of Vinter v UK was recently decided by the European Court of Human Rights, and has raised a good deal of controversy regarding the right of the United Kingdom to sentence a prisoner to a life sentence (the Whole Life Tariff) without the chance of review.
Mrs Nicola Padfield discusses the judgement of the European Court, and the corresponding reaction from members of the UK Government and others.
Mrs Padfield is Reader in Criminal and Penal Justice at the University of Cambridge. She is a barrister by training, and also a Bencher of the Middle Temple. Mrs Padfield has also been elected as the next Master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and will take office on 1 October 2013. For more information about Mrs Padfield, please refer to her profile at www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/acade...
Law in Focus is a collection of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty.

[@srs5933]

So she thinks a convicted double murdered (and subsequent attempted murder whilst in prison) should be given 'hope' of release. I'd be interested to know when she thinks it would be 'safe' to release him back into the community. At least so I can move out of the area. As for him having no incentive to behave that could soon be addressed with a little imagination.

[@starsnstrife]

Better to detain indefinitely, than to have the person killed and later find out they were innocent.

[@firebird7388]

Gary Vinter admitted his crime just after he was arrested for it, so in his case he wouldn't have been wrongly convicted and executed if the death penalty was still in use. More importantly, this man is an advert for why a whole life sentence is a bad idea. Such sentences give prisoners no real incentive to behave well, abide by prison rules, co-operate with prison staff or make any real effort with rehabilitation. Just before his challenge was heard in the European courts, he wounded another prisoner - and merely asked the prison staff to make sure he got another life sentence for his "collection", as his life sentences didn't mean anything to him anymore. And earlier this year he was found guilty of attempting to murder another prisoner in a near-fatal attack. And he is not the only prisoner serving a whole life sentence who has behaved violently and injured others in prison. During the 1980s, one such prisoner even committed more killings in prison!

[@AKARazorback]

I think detaining anyone indefinitely is a pretty sad practice in general...