How Different Are Lifers from Other Long-Term Prisoners?

• In Event: Life Sentencing in America: Current Trends and New Avenues of Research

Abstract

Criminal justice policy makers have largely overlooked the distinctive profiles of lifers and long termers. Interventions and prison programming have not traditionally been designed to address the needs of these individuals. The limited body of research that has focused on lifers has generally found that individuals serving life sentences do not pose a distinctive threat to public or prison safety (Cunningham & Sorensen, 2006; Mauer et al., 2004). However, studies have seldom conducted comparisons beyond official records of offending, and much remains unknown about the backgrounds as well as the social and psychological characteristics of long termers and lifers. Drawing on interviews conducted with a sample of prisoners in a maximum-security facility in Paris, this study contrasts the profiles of lifers with individuals who are sentenced to otherwise long sentences (10+ years). The narratives about desistance from crime are contrasted between the two groups.

Author

• Lila Kazemian, John Jay College of Criminal Justice