Myra Hindley: Murderer, prisoner, policy architect. The development of whole life prison terms in England & Wales

Myra Hindley, Britain's most notorious murderer, was a victim. In the first instance, Hindley was a victim of her sex; being a woman, who murdered children, ensured disproportionate attention and public vitriol in comparison to her partner. Secondly, Hindley was a victim in a way that is yet to been explored, she was a victim of timing; the first real case to test developments in sentencing and prison tariffs after death penalty abolition. Hindley's case shows the development of the whole life tariff and capital punishment replacement pieced together chiefly in response to her bids for freedom. Hindley, uncertain and uninformed of her eventual sentence for nearly three decades, became the victim of an era when there was no sentence left available to punish those deemed to be the 'worst of the worst' and, tacitly, she became an unwitting architect of the whole life prison term in England and Wales.