NCJ Number
211254
Date Published
2005
Length
23 pages
Annotation
This chapter compares a life sentence in prison to the experience of having one's life foreshortened by an incurable illness that is predictable, inevitable, and universally negative.
Abstract
The psychological experience of receiving a life sentence and then entering prison to begin serving such a sentence impacts the individual's sense of self and of relationships with others. It involves a feeling of losing all the anticipated experiences of and control over taken-for-granted life events and objectives. The psychological reaction to receiving and serving a life sentence is therefore comparable to the experience of being told by a doctor that one has a chronic or terminal illness and then having to live with the expectation of premature death. The author argues that both indeterminate confinement and incurable illness are experienced as "liminal" states, i.e., the disruption of a customary and familiar sense of self and one's life-course and the entering of radically different social and environmental circumstances in which previous measures of self-worth and meaningful life plans are obliterated. The impact of life in prison on the human psyche and the human spirit has certain universal features, notably confrontation with a response to loss of customary control over a range of life events. The freedom that is left is a choice of how to respond to new events and circumstances that affect the selection of measures of self-worth and the meaning of one's life under the circumstances imposed upon it. Research objectives are proposed under the theoretical approaches developed in this chapter. 2 notes and 51 references