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When can a mental illness be used as evidence to deny someone release from prison? What if that illness is not diagnosed but is instead inferred by people who have input in a prisoner’s case? People serving parole-eligible life sentences experience this ‘armchair psychology’ in a variety of ways and with grave consequence. They are called antisocial, sexual sadists, pathological liars, and sociopaths in order to justify their continued confinement, though rarely do these labels come from a licensed clinician. In this paper, my analysis focuses on the ways that mental health is understood and (co)constructed within the lifer parole process, the assumptions legal actors make about the availability and role of mental health service provision in prison, and the narrative strategies used in the law and in practice to frame mental health issues as evidence of risk. I draw from both fieldwork and parole hearing transcripts in this analysis. Findings include a discussion of the contrast between how mental health is understood in the context of punishment and how it is understood in public clinical practice, as well as the implications those understandings have for legal categorizations upon which release depends.