Inside or outside? Expanding the narratives about life-sentenced prisoners
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474517737048 |
| Author | Steve Herbert |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Inside or outside?
Expanding the narratives
about life-sentenced
prisoners
Steve Herbert
University of Washington, USA
Abstract
The number of life-sentenced prisoners in the United States is growing, an increase that
deserves ongoing critical consideration. Such consideration is heightened by the fact
that many lifers undergo significant personal transformations during their incarceration.
This paper uses interviews with 21 life-sentenced prisoners in the state of Washington
to document the degree of such transformations. These transformations create com-
pelling questions for theoretical strains in the sociology of punishment that draw
upon the seminal work of Durkheim. Further, those transformations deserve greater
consideration as the politics and practices of incarceration continue to unfold in the
United States.
Keywords
life sentences, redemption, sociology of punishment
The number of life-sentenced prisoners is growing in the United States. According
to the Sentencing Project, 206,268 prisoners—about one in seven nationwide—
were serving what amounts to a life sentence in 2016. That number has more
than quadrupled since 1984, a reality that unsurprisingly is generating more
aging prisoners (Nellis, 2017). Projections suggest that as many as one-third of
American prisoners will be 55 or older by 2030. That would represent an increase
in that population of 4400% from 1980 to 2030 (ACLU, 2012).
Corresponding author:
Steve Herbert, Department of Law, Societies, and Justice, University of Washington,Box 353565, Seattle, WA
98195, USA.
Email: skherb@uw.edu
Punishment & Society
2018, Vol. 20(5) 628–645
!The Author(s) 2017
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1462474517737048
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
These numbers are a fairly new phenomenon. As late as the 1970s, a life
sentence rarely meant exactly that (Harvard Law Review Association, 2006).
Life without parole laws saw a rising popularity in that decade, however, driven
in part by the temporary suspension of capital punishment (Nellis, 2013). Today,
49 states and the federal government have life without parole as a sentencing
option (Gottschalk, 2013). This punishment is typically meted out for such violent
crimes as aggravated murder, but can also be imposed on so-called habitual
offenders, commonly through “three strikes and you’re out” laws (Nellis, 2010).
These policy shifts were part of a general “race to incarcerate” that infected
American politics from the late 1970s into the 1990s (Beckett, 1997), a politics
that generated more punitive sentences (National Research Council, 2014), includ-
ing increased life sentences (Nellis, 2013). Notably, the increase in life-sentenced
prisoners occurs despite the fact that rates of crime, including violent crime, have
been on a steady decline (Nellis, 2017).
From the perspective of the sociology of punishment, this rise in life sentences
can be at least partially understood by following the lead of Durkheim (1984), who
famously emphasized the societal benefits that derive from sharp distinctions
between the good and evil, between the sacred and profane, between the
clean and polluted (see also Douglas, 2002; Erickson, 2004). From this viewpoint,
punishment must be understood primarily in cultural terms. Smith (2008: 171)
summarizes the idea well: “[Punishment] is about eliminating the disgusting and
unruly, effecting the decontamination of the spiritually and morally offensive,
banishing evil, and enforcing cultural classifications and boundaries by shutting
down liminal possibilities.”
Even if punishment is driven by administrative mechanisms governed by some-
what autonomous legal and bureaucratic procedures, it is always deeply symbolic.
Again, here’s Smith (2008: 13): “Concerned with the regulation of unruly
offenders, the judicial mandate to punish is underpinned by cultural codes requir-
ing practical solutions to the peculiarly cultural and moral problem of disorder.”
As Durkheim and others suggested, society’s moral order needs such distinctions
between the sacred and the profane. Without these boundaries, social unity is
threatened; for “us” to exist, so must a “them.” Thus, for Durkheim, punishment
fulfills basic, functional needs for society.
The politics of punishment are indeed frequently couched in symbolic terms,
and thus there is much reason to endorse Durkheim’s central insight. Yet even
those who accept this basic premise, such as Garland (1990) and Page (2004),
simultaneously show that the cultural categories that undergird punishment are
complicated in their origins and impacts. In other words, the symbolic components
of the politics of punishment are not solely emergent properties of a collective
conscience but also tropes available to reinforce political power. Central to such
arguments is a recognition that culture is not seamless and inert, but rather is
fractured and susceptible to manipulation. Helpful here is the metaphor of
Swidler (1986), who describes culture as a toolkit, one that can be used to reinforce
or resist arrangements of power. Culture is thus variegated and moldable by agents
Herbert 629
To continue reading
Request your trial