Some murderers and serious offenders could receive US-style sentences totalling hundreds of years as part of a review of the UK's human rights laws.
The government is considering the plan after a European court ruled in 2013 that whole-life sentences breached the European Convention on Human Rights.
The 100-year terms would allow prisoners to have their sentences reviewed, satisfying the court.
Prison reform campaigners branded the proposals "dangerous nonsense".
'Restore respectability'The proposed change in sentencing regulations comes as Conservative ministers prepare to publish reforms to the UK's human rights laws.
Guidelines according to schedule 21 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003:
- A whole life order for "exceptionally" serious offences
- 30 years for the murder of a police or prison officer on duty - and murders involving firearms or explosives; for gain; to obstruct or interfere with the course of justice; involving two or more persons; involving sexual or sadistic conduct; or aggravated by race, religion or sexual orientation
- 25 years where the offender took a knife or other weapon to the scene
- 15 years for all other offences
They want Britain's Supreme Court to have the final say in cases relating to human rights, rather than the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg.
The ECHR ruled in July that whole-life sentences - allowed under English law - breached the European Convention on Human Rights because they did not include the possibility of a "right to review".
The government was given six months to respond to the decision, which the prime minister has said he "profoundly disagreed" with.
One option now being considered by the government is a plan to allow judges to impose jail terms of hundreds of years, which would potentially allow offenders to have their sentences reviewed and reduced.
Policing minister Damian Green, who leads the committee responsible for drawing up reforms to limit the influence of the Strasbourg court on British life, told The Daily Telegraph: "British laws must be made in Britain. I want to restore the respectability of human rights."
He said the Conservatives wanted to "restore human rights to their appropriate non-controversial place", adding they were "the base of any democratic free society".
The Prison Reform Trust's Juliette Lyons said the government was trying to "dodge complying with the Human Rights Act".
"It sounds like a dangerous nonsense," she said. "What it risks is further inflation in sentencing. We've already got sentencing that has got longer year-on-year - people serving life sentences are serving three years longer than they did ten years ago."
There are currently 49 criminals in England and Wales serving whole-life prison terms.
Mark Bridger, 47, who was sentenced to life in prison in May for the murder of five-year-old Welsh schoolgirl April Jones, has lodged an application to appeal against his sentence.
His initial hearing at the Court of Appeal is scheduled for early 2014.
'Unduly lenient'Ian McLoughlin, 55, who admitted killing Good Samaritan Graham Buck, 66, in Hertfordshire, while on prison day-release, was given a 40-year sentence in October.
Mr Justice Sweeney, who sentenced McLoughlin at the Old Bailey, said he was barred from passing a whole-life tariff because of the European judgment.
The Attorney General Dominic Grieve is due to appeal against his sentence, describing it as "unduly lenient".
On the day of McLoughlin's sentencing, Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said: "It is the government's clear view that whole-life tariffs should be available for the most serious offenders.
"That is the position clearly stated in our law, and what the public expects. The domestic law on this has not changed."
Lawyers at the Ministry of Justice are now looking at whether the law needs to be changed to allow judges to hand down more severe sentences.
Under the US system, very long prison sentences are often imposed by states as an alternative to the death penalty.
In August last year, Ariel Castro, who abducted three women and held them captive for more than a decade, was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, plus 1,000 years.
He was found hanged in his cell in Ohio in September.
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