Reviewable permanent imprisonment: what the most serious penalty in the Criminal Code consists of
Introduced by Organic Law 1/2015, reviewable permanent imprisonment is the most serious penalty that can be imposed in Spain. Its name combines two apparently contradictory terms, permanent, which suggests indefiniteness, and reviewable, which implies the possibility of a way out, and that tension reflects the difficult balance between the most severe punitive response and the constitutional requirements that prohibit inhuman penalties.
The name sums up its dual nature. Permanent means that it has no predetermined duration: unlike ordinary prison sentences, imposed for a specific number of years, it has no fixed end date in the judgment. Reviewable means that, once certain minimum periods of effective service have elapsed, the court can and must examine whether the convicted person meets the conditions for release. According to the Constitutional Court, it is precisely that review mechanism that makes the penalty compatible with the Constitution: it is not a definitively fixed penalty with no way out, but an indefinite penalty with a right to periodic review.
It does not apply to just any serious offence, but to cases of exceptional gravity. The most frequent case is murder when certain circumstances concur: that the victim is under sixteen years of age or especially vulnerable, that the murder follows a sexual offence, that it is committed by someone belonging to a criminal organisation or that the perpetrator has committed more than two murders. It also applies to the killing of the Head of State and other senior figures, to terrorism offences resulting in death and to crimes against humanity and genocide resulting in death.
The review mechanism does not operate from the first day. The general minimum period is twenty-five years of effective service; it rises to twenty-eight when it concurs with another prison sentence, and to thirty-five in offences of terrorism or organised crime. Once the period is served, the convicted person only has the right to have their situation reviewed, not to be released automatically.
For the court to be able to order the suspension of enforcement, that is, parole, several requirements must concur: having served the minimum period, having maintained good conduct, having a favourable prognosis of social reintegration and not representing a danger to society. If they concur, enforcement is suspended for a period of between five and ten years; if not, the penalty continues and must be reviewed again every two years.
The concept has generated intense constitutional debate, centred on Article 25.2 of the Constitution, which directs penalties towards reintegration, on Article 15, which prohibits inhuman treatment, and on the principle of proportionality. The Constitutional Court, in its 2021 judgment, declared it constitutional, considering that the review mechanism guarantees that the penalty is not definitively inhuman, although with dissenting separate opinions. The European Court of Human Rights admits these penalties provided they include a real and not merely theoretical possibility of release.
In practice, since the minimum periods are twenty-five years and the penalty has only been in force since 2015, no convicted person has yet reached the possibility of review, so its actual operation is still to be verified.
