Dirk van Zyl Smit and Catherine Appleton (eds.), Life imprisonment and human rights
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865818779824 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book Review
Dirk van Zyl Smit and Catherine Appleton (eds.), Life imprisonment and human rights. Hart
Publishing: Oxford, 2016; 521 pp. ISBN 9781509902200, $140 (HBK)
Reviewed by: Jordan Anderson, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
In late 2017, Australia was granted an eagerly awaited and hard-fought seat on the
United Nations Human Rights Council for the first time in history. Soon after this
appointment, the Australian government was questioned on its sixth periodic report
to the Human Rights Committee in accordance with the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, submitted three years after it was due. The Committee found
aspects of the report “troubling,” and proclaimed that Australia had a very low grade of
human rights compliance for a country that claims to be a leader in this field, and that
“unfortunately, Australia had very little to be proud of” (Office of the High
Commissioner of Human Rights, 2017). New Zealand received a similarly scathing
report on its fourth periodic report to the Committee on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights in March 2018. It is therefore unsurprising that the human rights
implications of the sentence of life imprisonment have remained largely unexamined
in Australia and New Zealand, as well as internationally (but see Anderson, 2012).
Under these circumstances, and in the broader context of reflexivity on rights issues,
it is timely for academics and governments alike to consider the human rights implica-
tions of the sentence of life imprisonment, and its purpose and position in justice
systems in Australia and New Zealand, and throughout modern society.
Life imprisonment is the most severe penal sanction that can be enforced by the state
in most modern justice systems today, aside from the tiny minority still imposing the
death penalty. In his earlier work, Dirk van Zyl Smit has noted that life imprisonment is
viewed in many jurisdictions as the “natural and lesser alternative to the death penalty”
(2002, p. 215). This is the case in both Australia and New Zealand, where the sentence
has endured without threat of rigorous scrutiny. In fact, there is little academic research
on the human rights implications of life imprisonment internationally, or the nuances of
the sentence throughout jurisdictions. Life Imprisonment and Human Rights seeks to fill
the void in this under-researched area: to provide an understanding of what life impris-
onment is and to demonstrate what human rights are relevant to it using perspectives
from a range of jurisdictions. Editors van Zyl Smit and Catherine Appleton bring
together a group whom they refer to as an “international dream team” of experts on
the subject, with representatives from all continents contributing a range of empirical
and doctrinal research to the collection. With 20 chapters and 30 contributors from a
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
2018, Vol. 51(4) 638–640
!The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865818779824
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