Currently, prisoners have a legal right to enter into marriage in the place of their detention, according to the Marriage Act 1983. The Civil Partnership Act 2004 provided for same sex couples to enter into a civil partnership, followed by the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013. In December 2019, civil partnerships were extended to opposite sex couples, as Civil Partnership (Opposite-sex Couples) Regulations 2019 amended the 2004 Act.
	Marriage and civil partnerships in prison are relatively infrequent. In 2022, around 60 prisoners applied to marry in prison, out of a total prison population of approximately 80,000.
	Under current operational policy, as set out in PSI 14/2016 (Marriage of Prisoners and Civil Partnership Registration), where a prisoner wants to marry or enter into a civil partnership in a prison, he or she is required to obtain a statement of authority from the prison governor which states that there is no objection to the prison being named as the place at which the marriage or civil partnership will take place. The statement by the responsible authority is not required if the prisoner is getting married or entering a civil partnership outside the prison.
	The measures in the Act prohibits prisoners who are serving a whole life order from marrying or forming a civil partnership. For prisoners who have been sentenced to a whole life order, it is considered that it would undermine confidence in the Criminal Justice System for them to be allowed to marry. This sentence is the single most severe punishment in UK criminal law and means that the offender must spend the rest of their life in prison. Whole life orders are reserved for those who have committed the most serious crimes, for example serial or child murders that involved a substantial degree of premeditation or sexual or sadistic conduct.
	The Act provides that the Secretary of State may grant permission for a prisoner serving a whole life order to marry only where they consider such permission is justified on compassionate grounds in exceptional circumstances.
Infected Blood Compensation Body Restriction on marriage for whole life order prisoners