ABSTRACT
The extension of the right to review under Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights to the continued imprisonment of prisoners whose sentences are longer than their actuarial life expectancy and those who are terminally or otherwise seriously ill raises important substantive and procedural issues. This chapter will demonstrate that in cases of prisoners whose sentences are longer than their actuarial life expectancy the appropriate time for review should be determined with a view to allowing a possibility of regaining freedom rather than dying at home. Whereas, in the cases of terminally or otherwise seriously ill prisoners, the review should be carried as soon as serious illness is diagnosed. Moreover, such review should be accompanied by procedural safeguards prescribed under Article 5(4), because this Article prescribes guarantees against arbitrary deprivation of the right to liberty. It is applicable where the link between the sentencing decision and the continued deprivation of liberty might be broken because of a shift in the balance between the aims that justified detention in the first place. The fundamental interests at stake during the review of continued imprisonment of such prisoners, as well as the principle of the rule of law, require that such review meets the requirements of Article 5(4).
