Revisable Permanent Prison Sentence: the de facto life sentence in Spain

Abstract

By the Constitutional Law 1/2015, the Spanish Criminal Code was amended to introduce a new sentencing under the name “revisable permanent prison”, which basically allow parole ineligibility periods and abolish opportunities for early parole reviews for certain serious offences. So as a result, Spain do have mandatory life sentence under a politically correct name, in order to be respectful with the constitutional requirements which stablish that the main aim of the imprisonment must be the rehabilitation. The paper focus on legal aspects -such as the constitutionality of this sentence or its relation with the penitentiary system- and on the criminological ones, such as the possibilities of rehabilitation and the consequences of long term imprisonment no just for the inmate theirself, but also for their inner circle. Related to the rehabilitation, the problem of the sentence development is addressed from two different views; from the lack of prediction in the law and from the penitentiary scope. The key elements of this entire truss designed by the lawmaker are the victims, whose concerns are not understand as a needing of expanding their safety as a criminal policy goal, but in such a way that they have been transformed into policy sanctification. In that way, it is highlighted here how the media influence the perception the people have on the criminal issue and the important role that have recently played the victims’ lobbies in the criminal law development.