Killers to be jailed with no release in most serious cases

Murderers face longer jail terms under new sentencing guidelines set out yesterday by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf. The country's most senior judge said that in the worst cases the new prison sentences would mean "little or no hope" of release.

The new guidelines come in the same week the European Court of Human Rights ruled that British home secretaries acted unlawfully in overruling recommendations by the Parole Board that convicted killers were safe for release.

Lord Woolf said a "substantial upward adjustment" in the minimum sentence might be appropriate in the most extreme cases such as those involving multiple murders.

He said: "In suitable cases, the result might even be a minimum term of 30 years ... which would offer little or no hope of the offender's eventual release. In cases of exceptional gravity, the judge, rather than setting a whole life minimum term, can state that there is no minimum period which could properly be set in that particular case."

Lord Woolf said that in certain "especially grave" categories of offences a term of 20 years and upwards could be apt. "These include cases in which the victim was performing his duties as a prison officer at the time of the crime or the offence was a terrorist or sexual or sadistic murder or involved a young child."

The guidelines were given in a practice statement that comes into force immediately. Lord Woolf said the statement replaced the previous single normal tariff of 14 years by substituting a higher and a normal starting point of respectively 16 and 12 years. The higher starting point of 16 years applies to cases "where the offender's culpability was exceptionally high or the victim was in a particularly vulnerable position", such as when the murder was racially motivated or a contract killing.

Lord Woolf said cases falling within the normal starting point of 12 years "will normally involve the killing of an adult victim, arising from a quarrel or loss of temper between two people known to each other". That could be reduced to eight or nine years if the murder was one in which the offender's culpability was significantly reduced, including when the offender was suffering a mental disorder or the case came close to the borderline between murder and manslaughter.

Welcoming the announcement, Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo, the probation officers' union, said the guidelines brought "much-needed clarity to mandatory life sentencing".

But Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, said the new minimum terms were a scandal. "Lord Chief Justice Woolf and his entourage of liberal judges care more for the criminals than they do for the victims and their families. The lengths of these minimum sentences are an absolute insult to the families of those who have been murdered," he said.

Lord Woolf said the starting points of 12 years and 16 years for life sentences were the equivalent of determinate sentences of 24 years and 32 years. "In fact, an offender is most unlikely to be released on the expiry of the minimum term and for the purpose of calculating the earliest date of normal release on licence, the minimum term is approximately the equivalent of a determinate sentence of twice its length."

In the case of young offenders, the "sentencing judge should always start from the normal starting point appropriate for an adult [12 years]" and then reduce the starting point to "take into account the maturity and age of the offender". He said: "Some children are more, and others are less, mature for their age and the reduction that is appropriate in order to achieve the correct starting point will very much depend on the stage of the development of the individual. The sort of reduction from the 12-year starting point which can be used as a rough check is about one year for each year that the offender's age is below 18.

"So, for a child of 10, the judge should be considering a starting point in the region of five years."

Having arrived at the starting point, the judge should then take account of the aggravating and mitigating factors.The welfare needs of the offender also had to be taken into account, he said.