<Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (November 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (November 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> The whole life order (formerly a whole life tariff) is a court order whereby a prisoner who is being sentenced to life imprisonment is ordered to serve that sentence without any possibility of parole or conditional release . This order may be made in cases of aggravated murders committed by anyone who was aged 21 or above at the time of the crime . The purpose of a whole life order is for a prisoner to be kept in prison until he or she dies with almost no chance of eventual release, although parole can be granted in exceptional circumstances . A prisoner can still be released by the Home Secretary on compassionate grounds such as great age, injury, disability or ill health; which has also seen several life sentence prisoners being granted early release a considerable length of time before the date when they could first apply for parole . A whole life tariff can also be quashed on appeal by the Court of Appeal; a number of prisoners have had their sentences reduced by this method . From 1983, the Home Secretary had the right to decide how long a life sentence prisoner should serve before being considered for parole, and the trial judge was not obliged to recommend when or if an offender should be considered for parole . In some cases, the trial judge had recommended that a life sentence prisoner should at some point be considered for parole, only for the Home Secretary to later impose a whole life tariff; this happened in a number of cases involving prisoners who had been sentenced to life imprisonment before or after 1983 . </P> <P> The question of whether a Home Secretary or any of the other appropriate authorities should have the power to impose whole life tariffs was a controversial one, since a decision to impose such a sanction (or not) could carry political consequences for the Home Secretary and, by extension, the government they served--as well as a backlash by the national media . Perhaps the most notable example is Myra Hindley, jailed for life in 1966 for her role in the Moors Murders . Her trial judge recommended that she should serve a minimum of 25 years before being considered for parole, However, this was later increased to 30 years and in 1990 to "whole life" by David Waddington . Supporters of her campaign for parole argued that she was being kept in prison to serve the interest of successive Home Secretaries and their respective governments . She died in November 2002, having never managed to win parole; on three occasions she had appealed against the Home Office's ruling that she should never be released, but each of these appeals failed . </P>

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