List of prisoners with whole-life tariffs

This is a list of prisoners who have received a whole-life order through some mechanism in jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It has been reportedly issued in approximately 100 cases since its introduction in 1983, although a significant percentage of these prisoners have since died in custody, or had their sentences reduced on appeal.

There are currently at least 70 prisoners in prisons or secure hospitals in England and Wales who are reported to be serving whole-life orders. These include some of Britain's most notorious criminals, including the Moors murderer Ian Brady and "Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe.

A number of others, including Brady's accomplice Myra Hindley, have died in prison since being sentenced.

There are also a number of prisoners, including police killer David Bieber, whose sentences have been reduced on appeal.

However, some of Britain's most notorious murderers are not serving whole-life sentences. These include convicted child killers Roy Whiting and Ian Huntley. However, both murderers have been issued 40-year minimum terms by the High Court, which means that they are likely to remain imprisoned for most if not all of their lives. Many other life sentence prisoners have also been issued with minimum terms which mean that they are unlikely to be released until their old age, if ever.

Successive Home Secretaries are known to have imposed whole life orders for at least 23 murderers (note, this list is incomplete):

With accomplice Myra Hindley, he buried the children in shallow graves on Saddleworth Moor. Since 1985 he has been held in a mental hospital and has been on long-term hunger strike, which has led to his being force-fed through a tube. In 2001, he published a book on serial killing. The body of one of his victims, 12-year-old Keith Bennett, remains undiscovered on the Moor, despite Brady's and Hindley's own heavily guarded efforts to locate the remains themselves after they admitted two further murders in 1986; they did, however, guide police to the buried body of 16-year-old Pauline Reade in 1987.

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