Nobody is mourning Ian Huntley. I’m certainly not. But his recent death in custody – allegedly at the hands of a fellow inmate – is worth pausing on. Not out of sympathy, but because of what the circumstances say about the state of the prison system.
The man alleged to have killed Huntley, Anthony Russell, is serving a whole-life order for the murder of three people in 2020, one of whom he raped. Huntley, convicted of the murder of two children almost two decades previously, was not serving a whole-life order. There was a date on the horizon, in 2042, when the Parole Board would have considered his release. This is surprising to people: Huntley was one of the most reviled men in the UK, how could he not have a throw-away-the-key sentence?
The answer is that sentences have been getting progressively longer over the last few decades. Up to 1965, the penalty for murder was death. Following the abolition of the death penalty, the penalty was a mandatory life sentence, with the minimum term being set by the Home Secretary, who would take advice from the trial judge.
The Criminal Justice Act 2003 then transferred the power to set minimum terms from the Home Secretary to trial judges, and introduced a framework of starting points for murder sentences – a baseline, or a floor if you will. It came into force on 18 December 2003. Huntley was convicted on 17 December 2003. This quirk of timing meant that the sentencing took some time, as the judge was required to apply the new framework. Under that framework, a whole-life order was the starting point for child murder involving sexual or sadistic motivation, or abduction. Whilst sexual motivation was considered likely in Huntley’s case, it was not proven. Therefore, Huntley received a minimum term of 40 years, rather than a whole life order.
Russell did receive a whole-life order for his 2020 convictions, given the particular factors in his case and the shift of baselines over time. When you create a floor in sentencing, there is realistically only one direction in which sentences are going to go.
Every new piece of legislation – and there have been many – introduce more mandatory minimums and turn the sentencing ratchet further. For example, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 changed the starting point for the murder of a child. Now the threshold is simply that the murder is premeditated; sexual or sadistic motivation is no longer required. Under the law as it now stands, Huntley would undoubtedly have received a whole-life order if sentenced today.
Each time there is a catastrophic high-profile incident, it leads to outcry and calls to increase punishment – a ratchet which only allows one direction of travel.
In 2020, Hashem Abedi was sentenced for his role in the Manchester Arena bombing, in which 22 people were killed. At sentencing, the judge said that a whole-life order would have been a just sentence, but he couldn’t impose one. This was because Abedi was 20 at the time of the attack, and the minimum age for a whole-life order at the time was 21. He received a minimum term of 55 years, instead.
At time of writing, this remains the longest minimum term ever imposed by a British court. Despite this, there was immediate outcry at the idea that someone who had murdered 22 people, mostly children, could ever be eligible for release. There was a campaign to change the law, and change it did. Whole-life orders became available from age 18. The minimum age went down, and the sentencing floor moved up.
Then came the horrific stabbing of three young girls in Southport in 2024. In January 2025, Axel Rudakubana was sentenced for these offences. The judge said that had Rudakubana been 18, he would have been compelled to impose a whole-life order. But he was 17 at the time of the attack – nine days short of his eighteenth birthday. He received a 52 years minimum instead. There has been further subsequent outcry seeking a further reduction in the age minimum.
Each case is unique. Each sentence is, in isolation, defensible. But the cumulative effect is a one-way ratchet in terms of sentence length.
At this point, some may question why I am spending so much time being concerned about sentences for those who have committed the most serious crimes. These are arguably the most dangerous of people, and most will consider it positive that they are spending ever increasingly long periods of time in prison. The problem is that this sentencing ratchet is operating across the board for essentially all violent offending. Quietly and consistently. Year on year.
The average minimum term for murder rose from around 13 years in 2000 to 21 years in 2021. Manslaughter sentences rose 80% between 2008 and 2021. The number of life sentence prisoners serving a minimum of over 20 years more than doubled between 2013 and 2023.
In September 2024, the four surviving former Lords Chief Justice, the most senior judges in the country, published a paper warning that sentence lengths had approximately doubled over fifty years, and raised the alarm that prison numbers had doubled alongside them. They note that sentence inflation is the single biggest contributor to the current prison population crisis.
The consequence is a prison population that has grown from around 40,000 in 1991 to around 88,000 today – while violent crime has fallen over the same period. We are currently hovering around 2,000 spare prison places. One riot-filled weekend would fill those up.
The prison service’s own measure of safe capacity is around 10,000 less than the current population. Prisons are completely and utterly full. The situation is so dire that in recent years there have been a series of emergency release schemes to relieve the pressure. We are, simultaneously, making sentences longer and releasing people sooner.
We are packing our prisons with increasing numbers of people serving very long sentences in a system that is chronically overcrowded, under-funded and under-staffed. The incentive structures that keep prisons functioning depend on prisoners having something to work towards in a safe and functioning environment.
An HM Inspectorate of Prisons report published in September 2025, following an unannounced inspection of HMP Wakefield, found a 62% rise in violent incidents and a 72% increase in serious assaults since 2022. Two weeks later, Ian Watkins was killed in that facility, allegedly by fellow inmates. Five months later, Ian Huntley was attacked at HMP Frankland, allegedly by someone who has a whole-life order and will never leave prison and indeed who may experience positive consequences if he decides to attack an infamous child killer. Both men were housed in a regime designed specifically to protect them and prevent people – who have already proven to be a bit rubbish at not murdering people – from murdering them.
If it can happen to Huntley in those circumstances, imagine what harm is happening to the thousands of other imprisoned people who aren’t so protected every day. Not necessarily murder, but violence, bullying and more. For years and years. Most of these people will be released – and be back out here with us, whether that is in 20, 30 or 40 years.
Attacks on infamous prisoners are not new – it wasn’t the first or even the second time Huntley had been attacked. What is new is the volume caused by overcrowding, increasingly hopeless residents, and limited staffing. There were seven homicides in prisons in England and Wales in 2025 – up from six in 2024, and sharply up from the five years prior to 2024, when there were between one and three per year. Male prisoners are around ten times more likely to be murdered than men in the rest of society.
England and Wales has more people serving life sentences than France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden combined. Are we really that much more dangerous a society?
I believe dangerous people should be quarantined from society, for their whole lives if necessary. But I also believe a justice system should be built so that it does not cause long term societal harm in the pursuit of ever more draconian punishment.
The system we currently pay for is housing a growing population of men serving sentences of extraordinary length, with little to no hope, with too few staff, too little space, and no coherent plan for what to do with them.
