Life imprisonment
imprisonment intended to last for life
Life imprisonment (or a life sentence) is any sentence of imprisonment in which the convicted individual will remain incarcerated for the rest of their natural life (or until pardoned or commuted to a fixed term), with or without the possibility of release. Crimes that are punishable by life imprisonment are considered extremely serious and usually violent. Examples of these crimes are murder, torture, terrorism, child abuse resulting in death, rape, espionage, treason, illegal drug trade, human trafficking, severe fraud and financial crimes, aggravated property damage, arson, hate crime, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, piracy, aircraft hijacking, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Law passes
Common law murder is a crime for which life imprisonment is mandatory in several countries, including some states of the United States. Life imprisonment (as a maximum term) can also be imposed, in certain countries, for traffic offences causing death. Life imprisonment is not used in all countries; Portugal was the first country to abolish life imprisonment, in 1884, and is the only country in the world that considers this type of punishment for the duration of a convict's natural life – both for minors and adults, with or without the possibility of parole – a violation of human rights. All other Portuguese-speaking countries and Macao also have maximum imprisonment lengths, as do all Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas except for Cuba, Peru, Argentina, Chile and the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Other countries that do not practice life sentences include Mongolia in Asia and Norway, Iceland, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Andorra and Montenegro in Europe.
Where life imprisonment is a possible sentence, there may also exist formal mechanisms for requesting parole after a certain period of prison time. This means that a convict could be entitled to spend the rest of the sentence (until that individual dies) outside prison.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Life imprisonment” is imprisonment intended to last for life. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Life, imprisonment and intended, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “imprisonment intended to last for life” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q68676. The Library of Congress control number is sh85076824. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1884.
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This entry incorporates text from “Life imprisonment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.