The central question-can life sentences be just?-is straightforward, but the answer is complicated by the vast range of penal practices that fall under the umbrella of life imprisonment.
Life Imprisonment explores this trend through systematic data collection and legal analysis, persuasively illustrated by detailed maps, charts, tables, and comprehensive statistical appendices. The authors estimate that nearly half a million people face life behind bars, and the number is growing as jurisdictions both abolish death sentences and impose life sentences more freely for crimes that would never have attracted capital punishment. In the first global survey of prisoners serving life terms, Dirk van Zyl Smit and Catherine Appleton argue for a human rights–based reappraisal of this exceptionally harsh punishment. As a consequence, it has become the leading issue in international criminal justice reform. Life imprisonment has replaced capital punishment as the most common sentence imposed for heinous crimes worldwide.
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