Trajectories of hope/lessness among men and women in the late stage of a life sentence
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806211067770 |
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Trajectories of hope/lessness
among men and women in the
late stage of a life sentence
Serena Wright
1
Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
Susie Hulley
Ben Crewe
2
University of Cambridge, UK
Abstract
Drawing on Snyder’s‘hope theory’as a conceptual framework, this article examines the
hope narratives of men and women at the ‘late stage’of a life sentence. The article aims
to bridge the existing gap between jurisprudence and sociological accounts on hope and
life imprisonment by extending this debate to men and women serving reducible life sen-
tences in England and Wales, for whom release is not guaranteed but assumed to be
attainable. Through focusing on the individual ways in which the spectre and procedural
elements of release shape narratives of hope and hopelessness, this article agrees with
Vannier that recent human rights debates have fallen short in terms of subjectively
understanding the complex relationship between ‘hope’and ‘release’for life-sentenced
prisoners. It concludes by highlighting the necessity of procedural legitimacy in reducing
uncertainty and promoting and maintaining hope among this group.
Keywords
hope, life sentence, long-term imprisonment, prison sociology, progression, release
Corresponding author:
Serena Wright, Law & Criminology, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham Hill, Egham, UK.
Email: serena.wright@rhul.ac.uk
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2023, Vol. 27(1) 66–84
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/13624806211067770
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Introduction
Recent legislative challenges have introduced into international jurisprudence the idea
that ‘hope’represents a fundamental right for prisoners serving capital or life without
parole (LWOP)/‘whole life’sentences
1
(see, for example, Vannier, 2016;
Wheelwright, 2017).In some jurisdictions, this has resulted in the prohibition of life sen-
tences that are non-reducible (those from which release is not normally granted),
2
on the
grounds that forcing an individual to ‘abandon any hope of ever regaining [their]
freedom’attacks their human dignity (Van Zyl Smit and Appleton, 2019: 298).
However, Vannier (2016: 190) argues that hope has been ‘narrowly construed’in legal
debates on this matter, which have tended to focus on the presence or absence of de
jure and de facto reducibility (respectively, whether the possibility of release exists in
law, and whether or not a ‘realistic prospect’of release exists in practice). Meanwhile,
accounts of the subjective experience of hope and reducible life imprisonment (in
which release is possible) have remained conspicuous by their absence. As a conse-
quence, attention has been largely drawn away from the ‘more fundamental’questions
about the humanity and legitimacy of such sentences (Vannier, 2016: 209). There is
also little evidence that the lived ‘complexity’of hope has been acknowledged within
these discussions (Seeds, 2021).
Sociological accounts of hope among people serving life sentences have also been
limited to some extent by the disproportionate emphasis on non-reducible life sentences
(chiefly LWOP) and focus on penal systems in North America (e.g. Johnson and Leigey,
2020; Johnson and McGunigall-Smith, 2008; Leigey, 2015; Leigey and Ryder, 2015;
Seeds, 2021; Wheelwright, 2017) and Europe (Vannier, 2016). Since the expectation
and possibility of release is built into the very logic of all but a small minority of life sen-
tences in England and Wales,
3
it is therefore likely that the operation and meaning of
hope—as well as its diminishment and loss—within this specific geographical, cultural
and penal context is shaped by different forces than those accounted for in much of
the existing work.
In response to the comparatively small body of research on hope among people
serving reducible life sentences, and the broad absence of subjective accounts of such
experiences in recent human rights debates on life imprisonment, Vannier (2016: 209)
has called for penologists to invest more energy into generating ‘testimonies’with this
group. Grounded in an inductive analysis of data from 33 male and female ‘late-stage’
4
participants in a broader study of life imprisonment from a young age, this article
responds to Vannier’s call by constructing a targeted analysis of hope narratives
among lifers who are approaching or have surpassed their minimum tariff: those for
whom the battle for release is often most tangible and most painful (Mason, 1990).
This is approached via the conceptual framework of Snyder’s (2000) ‘hope theory’,
which provides a useful mechanism for considering how hope is formed and dashed
within the context of goals, pathways and agency among life-sentenced prisoners as
they strive for release.
In doing so, one of our aims is to bridge the current gap between human rights and
sociological debates on hope and life imprisonment, and to extend this discussion by
drawing on subjective accounts to enhance our understanding of how the notion of
Wright et al. 67
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