Offenders who commit murders with sexual or sadistic motives will spend the rest of their lives in prison, under government proposals.
The plan will be in the King’s Speech, where King Charles reads out the government’s plan for the year ahead at the State Opening of Parliament.
It will also include measures to force criminals to appear in the dock, and a law to prevent prisoners from marrying.
This will be King Charles’s first time delivering the speech as monarch.
It will also be Rishi Sunak’s first King’s Speech as prime minister – and could be the last before the next general election, which is expected next year.
It presents the Conservatives, which have lagged Labour in the opinion polls for more than a year, with an opportunity to showcase key policies and create pre-election political dividing lines.
Around a third of the 20 or so bills have been carried over from last year’s parliamentary session or previously published in some form.
So you can murder someone in the UK without sexual or sadistic motives and be parole eligible? Apparently, the victim is less dead when such motives are absent. God Save the King!
I guess the UK is just as capable of crafting legislation to respond to specific crimes (likely the rape and killing of a young woman by a police officer a year or two ago) as the US. Striking though that there is still mentioned some ground for “compassionate release” in extraordinary circumstances, something even our liberal party would be hard pressed to offer. But in general the idea that increasing punishments for rare crimes will lower rates of those crimes doesn’t seem to be supported by data—America has more of these terrible crimes and harsher punishments across the board.