A second Dutch political party, VVD, has joined the PvdA proposal to assess whether prisoners with life sentences could receive pardons after 25 years. Both PvdA and VVD believe the life sentence in danger, as judges deviate increasingly towards lower penalties. Late last year, a court in Assen referred explicitly to the lack of perspective when serving a life sentence. In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights expressed criticism on the policy in the Netherlands; imprisonment may not be hopeless, the court stated. Lifelong penalties would for this reason be "inhumane."