Study casts doubt on mandatory life terms

Fewer than one person in five believed that sentencing cases of murder was "about right", the study found.

Report authors, law professors Barry Mitchell and Julian Roberts, said serious consideration should be given to using mandatory life sentence for "particularly serious cases" only.

Prof Mitchell, from Coventry University, and Oxford University's Prof Roberts said they wanted to test the assumption that anything less than automatic indefinite jail terms would undermine public confidence in the criminal justice system.

Their study, funded by charity the Nuffield Foundation, found that the public had limited understanding of how convicted murderers were sentenced.

The vast majority of people wrongly assumed the murder rate in England and Wales has increased, when it had actually begun to decline and a large proportion of those questioned underestimated the length of time that most murderers spend in prison before being released on life licence.

Just one-fifth of those questioned thought it right to convict someone of murder if they had not struck the fatal blow in a joint enterprise killing.