Life on Death Row: A Review of Ethnographic Accounts

• In Event: Roundtable: Studies in Law and Sentencing

Abstract

We will convey the main dimensions of life on death row from the point of view of the condemned. To illustrate their experience, we draw on the words and insights of death row prisoners and academic ethnographers who have studied death row confinement. In reviewing this literature, we categorized themes into several topics to illustrate how those who live and work on death row perceive and respond to its pressures and constraints. These themes include dismal conditions, institutionalized abuse, isolation, and mental anguish, which breaks down further into subcategories of powerlessness, fear, emotional emptiness, and the threat of deterioration and despair, culminating in dehumanization. Our research finds that life on death row, perhaps more than the death sentence in itself, is trying and traumatic for the condemned.

Authors

• Robert Johnson, American University

• Gabe Whitbread, American University