NCJ Number
223487
Journal
The Prison Journal Volume: 88 Issue: 2 Dated: June 2008 Pages: 328-346
Date Published
June 2008
Length
19 pages
Annotation
Through interviews with prisoners, both condemned and sentenced to life without parole and prison officers, this article creates a picture of the experience of life under sentence of death by incarceration.
Abstract
If it is society’s goal to maker prisoners suffer greatly for the rest of their lives, life imprisonment without the possibility of parole offers itself as perhaps the ultimate punishment society can inflict. If society’s goal is justice, the bedrock principle of proportionality in punishment requires that this ultimate punishment be reserved for the ultimate crime: capital murder. Once death by incarceration is accepted as the ultimate legal sanction, defendants facing this sanction should be provided the same legal safeguards and appellate procedures presently afforded to capital defendants. The research leads to the conclusion that death by incarceration is just as final, just as painful, and just as worthy of the careful scrutiny to which traditional capital sentences are subjected. Life without parole is examined as a form of death penalty, namely, death by incarceration as distinct from death by execution. Through interviews with a sample of prisoners (condemned prisoners and life-without-parole prisoners) and prison officers, it is argued that offenders sentenced to death by incarceration do not pose a special danger to others in the prison world or in the free world and that the suffering they experience is comparable to the suffering endured by condemned prisoners. Life without parole emerges as a viable alternative to capital punishment. Notes, references