Women Serving Life without the Possibility of Parole: The Different Meanings of Death as Punishment

Abstract

This article draws on the written accounts of a self‐selected group of 48 women serving life without parole (LWOP) in California. In their testimonies, death takes on a symbolic form illustrated by the passing of time and the ‘mortification’ of the self (Goffman 1959, 1961). Their letters emphasise an embodied construction of death, provoked by ageing, illnesses, and medical neglect, as well as through the removal of motherhood and mothering. Through exploring the different, and nuanced, meanings ascribed to death by women serving LWOP, the article combats the cultural invisibility of this punishment and those who endure it.

The power of the pen: Prisoners’ letters to explore extreme imprisonment

“…While I was worried that participants would not read my response, these concerns were partly mitigated by the fact that Kenneth sent my acknowledgement letter to the same mailing list he had used for the original flyer. I also sent my publication on women's experiences serving LWOP (Vannier, 2016) to one of the participant's lawyer, who gave her a copy. The female participants were all held in the same prison, increasing the chances of the paper circulating.…”

“…To make the overall argument, this article draws on a case study conducted in California in 2014, which is summarized and situated within the broader literature on LWOP. With some rare exceptions (Leigey, 2015; Vannier, 2016), most of the empirical works that explore LWOP’s severity stem from prisoners (Hassine, 2010) or policy reports (Nellis, 2017). Historical (Seeds, 2018), sociological (Appleton and Grøver, 2007) and legal works on LWOP (Steiker and Steiker, 2012), regularly underline that the punishment denies the hope of ever being released to a number of individuals, including African Americans and Latinos, juveniles, the elderly and the mentally ill (Nellis, 2013).…”

“…My study thus sought to enlarge LWOP’s picture by exploring the features of its severity, in particular the meanings ascribed to ‘death’ by those serving permanent incarceration (Vannier, 2016). It did not employ a political conceptualization of death as per Mbembé’s (2003) work nor did it rely on biological understandings of death, which in the context of extreme punishments is generally associated with methods of executions and their medicalization (Denno, 2002; Groner, 2002).…”

Discerning Penal Values and Judicial Decision Making: The Case of Whole Life Sentencing in Europe and the United States of America

“…The shadow of the death penalty looms large over the origins and use of the sentences, with concerns also being expressed that the same end result – death – is not subject to the same legal rigours as necessitated by the processes surrounding the use of capital punishment (Dolovich ). Vannier () also finds that death is part of the experience of the sentence, being ‘omnipresent’ (p.342). Whole life sentencing has also been criticised from a human rights perspective (Van Zyl Smit and Ashworth ).…”

Dirk van Zyl Smit and Catherine Appleton, Life Imprisonment: A Global Human Rights Analysis

“…In building a bridge between discussions on sentencing laws (Ashworth and Zedner, 2019; Van Zyl Smit and Snacken, 2009), and empirical investigations on the experience of life imprisonment (Crawley and Sparks, 2005; Crewe et al., 2020, 2017; Leigey, 2015; Vannier, 2016), the book further illuminates the exceptional severity of the punishment. The widespread use of heightened security measures, the limited access to rehabilitative opportunities, and the restriction on material conditions and human contact together impoverish the treatments afforded to life-sentenced prisoners and exacerbate the pains of life imprisonment.…”