The «right to hope» of persons sentenced to life imprisonment in Ukraine: is constitutionality achieved?

The article focuses on the issues related to the implementation of the right to hope for persons serving a life sentence under the national criminal legislation of Ukraine. According to the legal position initially formulated by the European Court of Human Rights and later supported by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, this type of punishment is recognized as not violating the human right to dignity or subjecting individuals to cruel and inhuman punishment, provided that the national legislation offers predetermined and realistic prospects for its reduction based on penological grounds. To align the Criminal Code of Ukraine with this legal position, the Law of Ukraine dated 18.10.2022 introduced the necessary amendments. Critical assessments of the amendments, as formulated in certain scientific studies, as well as subsequent appeals by those sentenced to life imprisonment through constitutional complaints regarding the updated version of Article 81 of the Criminal Code, have called into question whether the reformed provisions of the Criminal Code fully comply with the requirements of the Constitution of Ukraine. As a result of the study, four arguments are presented to support the view that the current legislative regulation of the right to hope for persons serving life imprisonment in Ukraine is within the standard set by the ECHR and meets the requirements of the Constitution of Ukraine. On this basis, it is argued that there is currently no need to align Part 3 of Article 81 of the Criminal Code with the Constitution, and that all constitutional complaints regarding its content may be dismissed by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine not only on procedural but also on substantive grounds. At the same time, the authors do not rule out the possibility of formulating, based on the practice of applying the current two-stage mechanism of release from life imprisonment, the grounds for direct release from life imprisonment in future criminal legislation.