Several other countries (e.g. Bulgaria, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands and, for certain crimes, Hungary, the Slovak Republic and Turkey) do not have a system of conditional release in respect of life-sentenced prisoners, so that life may literally mean life (see also paragraph 73). On the other hand, it is noteworthy that a number of Council of Europe member states do not have life sentences on the statute book.7 Instead, for the most serious crimes they have long determinate sentences usually ranging from 20 to 40 years. History of the concept of life imprisonment 69. Throughout history, life imprisonment has been intrinsically linked with the death penalty and has progress­ively become an alternative punishment for the most serious crimes. However, the initial purpose of this substitution was not to mitigate the situation of the convicted person. On the contrary, the medieval view, which persisted for many centuries, was that life-long imprisonment in combination with hard labour and solitary confinement would be seen by offenders as a worse alternative to death. In the same vein, one of the arguments for the retention of the death penalty was precisely that life imprisonment with hard labour was so severe that it would cause more suffering to the individual concerned and be more cruel than capital punishment. From today’s perspective, the view that persons serving a life sentence (or for that matter any other sentence) should 7. For example, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Portugal, San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia and Spain. Further, in practice, life sentences have never been imposed in Iceland and Liechtenstein. General Report of the CPT, 2015 ► Page 34 be additionally punished by the particular severity of conditions in prison is manifestly unacceptable. However, such a view is still deeply entrenched in the public opinion in various European countries. The concept of life imprisonment was introduced in the 1990s in many member states of the Council of Europe following the ratification of Protocol 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights abolishing the death penalty. The last execution in a Council of Europe member state took place in 1997 and, since 2013, Europe has been a death-penalty free zone in law (with the exception of Belarus).8 However, in many countries it was considered that the public would support the abolition of the death penalty only if its replacement was considered sufficiently punitive. Consequently, persons sentenced to death had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment but little detailed planning appears to have been carried out in relation to the implementation of the life sentences. At the same time, over the 25 years of the CPT’s existence, there has been a marked increase in the number of life sentences imposed. This seems mainly to be the result of two factors, the abolition or suspension of the death penalty throughout Europe and sentencing policies across member states in respect of serious crimes. The latest available statistics9 show that there were a total of some 27,000 life-sentenced prisoners in Council of Europe member states in 2014. On the basis of a sample of 22 countries in respect of which relevant data are available for a longer period, the num8. A moratorium has been introduced in the Russian Federation. 9. Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics (SPACE) 2004.8 and 2014.7.