The Supreme Court of Canada Friday unanimously ruled that a life sentence without any chance of parole is unconstitutional under Section 12 of the nation’s charter. In Canada, anyone serving a life sentence for first-degree murder is automatically ineligible for parole for 25 years.

Criminal Code Section 745.51, passed in 2011, allowed justices to give consecutive sentences of 25 years instead of concurrent sentences, adding additional periods of parole ineligibility for additional murders. For example, Alexandre Bissonnette, a gunman who killed six Muslim worshippers in 2017, received 40 years of parole ineligibility. The court determined that such a period is unconstitutional. 

The court wrote:

Offenders who have no realistic possibility of parole are deprived of any incentive to reform, and the psychological consequences flowing from this sentence are in some respects comparable to those experienced by inmates on death row, since only death will end their incarceration.

The court noted that, after 25 years of ineligibility, The Parole Board of Canada will merely consider whether Bissonnette and similarly situated prisoners should be released, but release is not guaranteed. Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper wrote that the ruling “devalues the lives of [Bissonnette’s] victims” and called the opinion a “grave injustice that calls for action from Parliament.”