Inside or outside? Expanding the narratives about life-sentenced prisoners

Ostracism or redemption? Considering the life-sentenced prisoner

So, one task for the sociology of punishment, particularly when one is seeking to understand the popularity of life sentences, is to retain Durkheim’s central insight about symbolic boundaries while recognizing fissures within the dynamics that shape how punishment is constructed, defended, practiced, and lived. I suggest here one means to do precisely that: I consider how the punishment regime appears to those who are set outside the moral boundary upon which Durkheim correctly focused. There is no stricter cultural demarcation than that constructed between the life-sentenced prisoner and the rest of society. One can thus ask where that boundary leaves those on the outside, those labeled the evil counterpart of society’s good? And, further, how do we reckon with the fact that many life-sentenced prisoners respond to their ostracism by pursuing ongoing projects of redemption?

It certainly may be the case, as Smith (2008: 16) asserts, that “the act of punishing is not really about the criminal offender at all. It is an act of imaginative reordering or expiation that offers a way of thinking and reinforcing moral boundaries, thereby rebuilding solidarity.” Yet unless executed, banished individuals do not disappear. Life-sentenced prisoners, for instance, may lie outside the moral boundaries that Smith describes, but they remain resident within cultural processes. And while their prison world may escape popular consciousness, it is still a social reality like any other area of human habitation. It is thus worth wondering what we learn when we encounter those individuals and seek to understand their worlds. In particular, how do many life-sentenced prisoners respond to the symbolic barriers erected against them? If they are able to resist those barriers, and still seek integration with various social groups despite their banishment, how must the sociology of punishment be enlarged?

I use interviews with 21 prisoners serving life sentences in two Washington State facilities to address these questions. In the process, I work to substantiate three main arguments. The first is that many such prisoners work to remain connected to a variety of social groups. Even as they fall victim to a socially functional drive to ostracize, they build constructive social relations. Most notably, many seek to influence fellow prisoners, particularly those who are younger and susceptible to mentoring. In short, many life prisoners suggest with their daily practices that the need for societal connection survives despite the most pronounced societal exclusion. Here, my findings reinforce a range of prior qualitative assessments of life-sentenced prisoners and the lives they construct inside (see Flanagan, 1981, 1995; Irwin, 2009; Johnson and Dobrzanka, 2005; Leigey, 2015). That my interview data are consistent with these other studies lends notable weight to my suggestion that the experience of lifers can importantly expand our approaches to the sociology of punishment.

The second argument focuses on the effects of life sentences. That an increase in such sentences is costly to the public fisc is hardly surprising, particularly as prisoners age and suffer medical complications (ACLU, 2012; Aday, 2003; Auerhahn, 2002; Chiu, 2010; Kerbs and Jolley, 2009). Such costs are themselves sufficient for reconsidering the ubiquity of life sentences. Here, however, I focus on the loss of human potential. Despite their banishment, many life prisoners continue to develop their human capital; for themselves and others, they develop new skills and sharpen existing ones. Although they do thereby improve their prison environments, their wider potential contributions are restricted by their incarceration. In this way, presumably functional public policy proves dysfunctional in its consequences. The reality of life-sentenced prisoners, then, suggests a need to broaden our consideration of what constitutes functional social policy beyond the otherwise useful frame developed by Durkheim.

Taken together, these two arguments suggest a third, one focused on the seeming power of societal narratives of exclusion. In maintaining social connections and in developing their human capital, many life prisoners draw upon another common and powerful social narrative—that of redemption. As McAdams (2007) notes, the discourse of redemption has a powerful place in American popular culture. And, as Maruna (2001) insightfully documents, the reconstruction of a self-narrative through which one constructs a new and valued identity is often critical to the ability of convicted criminals to desist from future wrongdoing and to otherwise see themselves as valuable social citizens (see also Lebel et al., 2015; Maruna et al., 2004; Vaughn, 2007). Certainly, many life prisoners seek to redeem themselves, despite the obstacles that impede them, and develop new self-understandings in the process. In terms of my focus here, the salience of the discourse of redemption suggests that cultural and political openings exist to trouble the exclusionary social forces that Durkheim emphasizes. Even if societies arguably require punishment, they also often celebrate resurrections from falls from grace. If such celebrations can also be understood as functional, then perhaps the political culture that undergirds punitiveness can be challenged on those grounds.

In what follows, I review how many lifers structure their daily lives in a purposeful fashion. I also review the processes through which many of those prisoners say they moved to come to that orientation. It is not my goal, however, to provide any thoroughgoing explanation for how prisoner change occurs. Neither is it my goal to provide any justification for life sentences. Even if some life-sentenced prisoners use the reality of their situation to better themselves and others, that hardly justifies the growth of such sentences. ¹ My goal rather is to document that many life-sentenced prisoners do change and to encourage a rethinking of punishment policy that takes seriously that notable social accomplishment. If life-sentenced prisoners show the incompleteness of a Durkheimian approach to punishment, so too do they demonstrate how the shift to retribution that animates the spread of life sentences (Gottschalk, 2013) deserves reconsideration in debates about incarceration policy. Even if the symbolic politics of punishment are much as Durkheim described, the redemptive scripts written by many lifers expand our understandings of the meaning of incarceration in important ways that demand recognition.

Data and analysis

Each of the 21 prisoners was interviewed two or three times, with each interview averaging 75 minutes in length. The interviews were semistructured. The interview schedule was organized chronologically. It was designed to enable the interviewee to trace his trajectory through his time in prison, to highlight any changes that occurred, to describe the impetuses for any such changes, and to elicit his perspective on his future. That said, each interviewee was given conversational license to introduce new and unanticipated themes.

Interviewees were selected through a two-stage process. First, prisoners were invited to join the sample after an introductory meeting held at each prison with life-sentenced prisoners. At this meeting, I described the research project and distributed copies of the interview schedule and consent form. Interested prisoners were instructed to communicate their willingness through written communication with prison staff. I then screened the list of interested prisoners using demographic information about race, age, length of confinement, and hometown. I sought to maximize variation along these demographic lines in choosing the group of 21 to be interviewed.

The interviews were tape-recorded and later transcribed. Those transcriptions were then coded for themes that were consistent across multiple interviews.

All of the names used below are pseudonyms.

“The least amount of acid on the water”: The role of lifers in the institution

Unsurprisingly, lifers, like all prisoners (Sykes, 1958), are aware of the symbolic boundaries upon which Durkheim focused. Take, for instance, this story from Leonard, who is serving life without the possibility of parole for a murder he committed at 18:

I went down to a doctor’s appointment in [nearby town]. I was so embarrassed getting out of the car and walking into the hospital and all the people staring at me and stuff. I was just humiliated. The feeling that I had of being 51 years old and being shackled like that it was just — it was hard. I can’t even describe how hard it was. I was ashamed. I was. I actually had to tell the doctor that I had been in prison for over 30 years because in my mind, at least, it showed him that I didn’t commit a crime at the age of 51. You see what I’m saying? I had to say that because — I don’t know — I just had to. It’s hard. Leaving here tonight and going back to my room and getting locked up. Not being trusted enough to walk down the tier without being watched. It’s just humiliating.

Given their numbers, it is unsurprising to learn that the lifers I interviewed commonly suggested that they played a notable role. In particular, they were often described as “easy keepers.” This term, deployed regularly both by prisoners and custody staff, captures how lifers commonly pose no security concern. Lifers typically follow the rules consistently. They rarely earn infractions, especially for any major problems such as violence or illicit trade (Cunningham and Sorenson, 2006; Sorenson and Wrinkle, 1996). Correctional officers thus worry little about them (see also Adams, 1995; Aday, 1994; Yates and Gillespie, 2000).

Even more than simply avoiding trouble, many life-sentenced prisoners work to exert a calming influence. As Oscar explains it:

But what I always consider the more typical, main population lifer, is a very stable personality who wants to get through each day one at a time, move on through with the least amount of acid on the water and go through whatever else, and they tend to be stabilizers.

Irwin identified religion as the key for effecting an awakening. For those I interviewed, however, change more likely occurred when they recognized that their behavior negatively impacted others, particularly their family. This was where Harold took the conversation when asked to describe the hardest component of his sentence:

I think for me, it was trying to wrap my mind around “forever”. That’s very hard to do. You know like, I’m never leaving this place? What did I get myself into? For me, that’s the hardest thing. But once that thought—once I had that thought, the very next thought was how horrible this must be for my family. And that now became—it’s the bane of my existence. The effects that it has on my family. For me, some of my brothers and sisters don’t write. They don’t come up and visit. We don’t talk anymore. My kid, my daughter calls up and sometimes I don’t hear from her for like six months. I have a—she has a 13 year old daughter. I have a granddaughter that’s 13 years old that I want to see and I want to visit and I want to be a part of their life. That’s what’s hard for me. Regardless of how hard it is for me, the daily life in here, for them it’s immeasurable. For my daughter. For my son. For my granddaughter. My family. Birthdays and holidays and things come up that I should be there with them. Instead I’m here.

Critical to other lifers was a recognition of their impact on their victims. Fred was a student in a course focused on restorative justice. Crime victims visited the class to discuss their experiences. Fred was deeply impacted. His life sentence was earned through Washington’s “three strikes” law. His third strike was for a robbery during which he brandished an unloaded weapon. With an unloaded gun, Fred thought little of those he robbed; he knew they were not endangered. But when crime victims came to his class, he reached a realization:

A bunch of people came in, and I was listening, and I was talking to these people, and they were talking about getting burglarized, some of them, and how traumatic that was. That some son of a bitch was in their house digging through their underwear drawer. You know, it made them uncomfortable to be in their house, and you know, people that have been in—robbed in banks—and it fucked them up enough that it was hard for them to even go to work because they were scared—it was traumatic for them. And I never really realized that. And then, you know, I got to thinking about it, like my god, somebody’s in here pointing a gun at them, like they don’t know if you’re gonna kill them or not, you know what I mean? That would scare the shit out of anybody, especially a woman, and that’s who’s usually in those positions, in banks, that work in those places. You know, that kinda got to me.

“I chose to do the right thing for once”: Interdependency and the life-sentenced prisoner

For those I interviewed, transformations were commonly sparked by a recognition that they existed in interdependent relations with others. From this realization came another—that instead of being a corrosive influence, they could be a positive one. This recalibration was central to each lifer who described a fundamental shift. To be awakened was thus to accept an obligation to others.

Charlie, for example, made a simple gesture that he later recognized was critical to his transition from narcissism to generosity. He had entered a close custody institution as a teenager. Scared, he joined a white supremacist gang for protection, and began a pattern of taking a predatory stance toward any new cellmates. He mostly saw them in terms of what resources or favors he could coerce from them. This changed when he got a cellmate who was younger than him:

Well, after a few months I actually start liking this kid and I remember it was his birthday and he really liked the band, Tool, so my buddy down the tier had cassette tapes of it, so I was like, “Hey let me get one of those and record it for him and I’ll give it to him for his birthday.” Evidently he was so shocked by that, you know that gesture of, “Hey you know somebody remembered it was my birthday,” because normally you don’t. It’s not really something you announce. You get a lot of razz on your birthday. A lot of guys will come up and punch on ya a little bit. You know your buddies will give you a hard time, but it’s not really something that you go, “Hey it’s my birthday.” It’s not an occasion like that, so it was a nice gesture on my part to say, “Hey, you know, happy birthday. This place sucks, but we do what we can.” That was just one of those moments where it didn’t really mean a lot at the time, but it was an opportunity where I chose to do the right thing for once and look out for somebody else and not me. So it was almost like I took that step from being that kid, that same kid sitting in that cell, to the guy who was kinda just trying to look after him a little bit.

Fred’s three strikes were robberies, all done to acquire resources for drugs. He thus recognized that his criminal career stemmed from his drug habit. His drive to help others originated in this history: he wished to help drug-using younger prisoners move toward sobriety. He was active in the prison’s Narcotics Anonymous group. And he frequently sought to recruit new members, particularly those younger prisoners whose habits he recognized all too well:

I don’t really know how to put it into words, but I started realizing that, you know, you only have so much time, and I started recognizing that. Before, I didn’t. I just kinda thought, “Fuck that, I won’t even think about it.” You don’t want to think about it. I started thinking about that and I wanted to make a difference and the only way I kinda could make amends for all the shit that I’ve done in my life and put my family through was try to help some of these kids in here. Because I was never much of a parent to my children. And you know, of course, you have regrets for that. You know, you kinda feel guilty about it. That’s what I was dealing with. So I look at a lot of these little dummies around here like my kids. You know? I try to steer them in the right direction. I want to help them find another way to do it. To find a life. To not end up in here sitting around talking to professors when you’re 61 years old [laughs].

As they encounter younger prisoners, then, lifers exert their moral suasion toward constructive ends. Lifers know they commonly possess stature in the prison; their age and experience generate some prestige. From this position, they seek to influence younger prisoners. They adopt the role of what White (2000) terms “wounded healers”; they use their experiences as moral leverage against the destructive impulses of their younger peers (see also Hamm, 1997; Lebel et al., 2015; Maruna et al., 2004; Toch, 2010), and in the process they construct a new self-identity as an agent of positive change (Maruna, 2001). As he talked about this type of work, Leonard was asked whether lifers were perhaps more influential than prison staff in helping the project of rehabilitation. He responded affirmatively:

Oh, absolutely. People don’t want to listen to the staff or the counselors. The counselors, they have such a huge case load that it’s hard for them to really focus on an individual. There’s no way that you can really mentor somebody. You can say “Well, I’m going to put you down for this program, this program, this program” and then people just wait and wait and wait. Months later, they’re still waiting, because there’s a waiting list on everything. In that sense, the lifers have much better control over — they don’t have control over who gets jobs and who doesn’t get jobs. What they do have is the knowledge of how to get a job quicker and who to approach about jobs. How to go about it. How to write up a resume. Things like that in here, to help those guys. We have the upper-hand because we live here. We know how the system works better than anybody that comes here that works eight hours a day. We live here 24 hours a day. In that sense, we know the underlying working of the facility much better than the staff that work here do.

“Instead of draining the system you can contribute”: Developing and sharing human capital

For many lifers, then, the weight and stigma of their banishment do not prevent them from establishing constructive relations with others. Aware of the negative consequences of their actions, they write a new narrative about themselves, one that they enact through acts of altruism (see also Maruna, 2001). The ostracism implicit in their sentence does not quell their desire to remain positive forces in their communities.

A key component of this transformation is the acquisition of new skills that enhance their human capital. For many, the capacity for benevolence was deeply interconnected with efforts toward self-improvement. Of course, it was not necessarily easy for life-sentenced prisoners to develop their human capital—they are often given low priority for prison programs. Prisoners with release dates receive higher priority; their participation in programs will presumably increase their odds of successful reentry. Unsurprisingly, the lifers I interviewed objected to this policy (see also Flanagan, 1995; Liem, 2016). As Edgar put it:

We can contribute and to a high degree, some real beneficial stuff. And there’s the thing, if you’re gonna be somewhere a long time, you can do a lot more than a guy that’s not gonna be. And you can do it on a steady consistency. Could be a contributor. Instead of draining the system you can contribute.

Some also worked to improve their capabilities with an eye toward benefitting communities outside the prison. Those involved in building homes referenced the double sense of satisfaction they derived from developing their own skills while assisting the less fortunate. For his part, Sean sought to develop his public speaking abilities through a program he helped develop to provide mentoring to at-risk youth. The youth would enter the facility to talk with the prisoners about their pasts and futures. Sean enhanced his sense of self-confidence as a speaker while simultaneously enhancing his sense of himself as a positive social force.

Other prisoners contributed artwork for sale to assist various social service efforts. Some had trained dogs as either companions or as guides. Yet others repaired bicycles for later use by low-income youth, or worked on a project that used worms to compost prison food waste. In each instance, prisoners saw their enhanced human capital as intrinsically connected to their ability to help those both inside and outside of prison.

In short, many life prisoners work consistently to improve their skills, both to improve their own self-worth and to benefit others. They do so despite restrictions on their ability to enroll in various programs, and despite the burden of their sentence’s incessant stigma. Even if cast away by law, many lifers respond by developing a sense of themselves as capable and beneficent.

Conclusion: “It would move mountains”

I sought here to use the narratives of life-sentenced prisoners to complicate the still relevant sociology of punishment that emphasizes, following Durkheim, the key symbolic work done by the political and cultural construction of boundaries between good and evil. As the quintessential social outcasts, lifers know what it means to lie beyond those boundaries, to be perpetually located on the banished outside of society. Yet their ostracism only makes more notable the redemptive lives that many of them are able to construct. This social accomplishment suggests that the boundary between good and evil is more permeable than a strict Durkheimian approach can recognize. For many of the lifers I interviewed, the roadblocks of their sentence are ever-present and oppressive. Yet many work to reconstruct themselves not as social outcasts but as capable contributors; they resist ostracism through constructive social engagement; they seek atonement through works that enhance themselves and others.

In the process, lifers implicitly drawn upon other common narratives besides the boundary-drawing ones emphasized by Durkheim, most notably the narrative of redemption. They create a new self-narrative (Maruna, 2001) through which their misbegotten past becomes the foundation of a reconstructed future. Prisoners thus join the company of others whose disgrace becomes the fodder for a rebirth that enables and celebrates acts of atonement for prior sins (McAdams, 2007).

One key source of the redemption narrative stems from religion (Applegate et al., 2000). As Garland (1990: 65–66) notes, a recognition of the role of religion in shaping penal policy adds an important corrective to Durkheim:

The Western Judaeo-Christian culture which has helped form modern penal punishments and which continues to shape penal policy, also draws upon the most elevated sentiments and moral attitudes. One has only to look at the charitable and philanthropic practices which have grown up around penal institutions, or at the penological teachings of religious and humanistic movements to see that, whatever else they involve, they do articulate sentiments such as sympathy, love, and pity, and promote attitudes of benevolence, forgiveness, and mercy. If, then, we follow Durkheim’s lead and explore the emotional context within which penal practice occurs, we should be clear that we are faced with a complex and ambivalent field of forces, rather than the uniform collective passion which he implies.

That such change occurs is itself evidence that ostracism is not all-encompassing, that the desire for human connection and development can persist in the most socially suffocating of circumstances. Such change also belies the seeming functionalism of a punishment regime that rigidly castigates and banishes. The increased costs of housing life-sentenced prisoners are an obvious detriment to society. But so is the loss of human capital that accompanies locking away prisoners who have much to offer. Because of this, as Garland (1990: 80) further notes, we need a wider view to assess how societally beneficial punishment might be: “One has to analyze punishment's outcomes–bearing in mind that what is 'functional' from one point of view may be dysfunctional from another.”

Life sentences are susceptible to multiple critiques. Their costs outstrip their usefulness, particularly given that few prisoners with life sentences who are released return to prison (Mauer et al., 2004). Such sentences arguably represent cruel and inhuman punishment (Appleton and Grover, 2007) and thus violate human rights (Human Rights Watch, 2012; Van zyl Smit, 2003). Life sentences may help, as per Durkheim, to serve society’s need for internal order, but they run counter to other societal needs and impulses; they can unjustifiably eclipse narratives that celebrate growth and change.

For Nate, who is serving a 134-year sentence for his involvement in a gang-related killing, the prison that houses him would change notably if the redemption narrative held greater weight. When asked how he thinks his prison could improve, he did not hesitate:

It would be nice if they would say, ‘You know what, since we see that people can change, you know what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna start treating people as if they can change.’ The belief that people have value and that they are redeemable. That alone would, I’m telling you, it would move mountains. It would move mountains.