Beyond Life Sentences PDF Download

Author: Eileen Tabios
Publisher: Anvil Books
ISBN:
Category : Philippine poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Author: Phoebe Zerwick
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 0802159397
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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A deeply reported, gripping narrative of injustice, exoneration, and the lifelong impact of incarceration, Beyond Innocence is the poignant saga of one remarkable life that sheds vitally important light on the failures of the American justice system at every level In June 1985, a young Black man in Winston-Salem, N.C. named Darryl Hunt was falsely convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a white copyeditor at the local paper. Many in the community believed him innocent and crusaded for his release even as subsequent trials and appeals reinforced his sentence. Finally, in 2003, the tireless efforts of his attorney combined with an award-winning series of articles by Phoebe Zerwick in the Winston-Salem Journal led to the DNA evidence that exonerated Hunt. Three years later, the acclaimed documentary, The Trials of Darryl Hunt, made him known across the country and brought his story to audiences around the world. But Hunt’s story was far from over. As Zerwick poignantly reveals, it is singularly significant in the annals of the miscarriage of justice and for the legacy Hunt ultimately bequeathed. Part true crime drama, part chronicle of a life cut short by systemic racism, Beyond Innocence powerfully illuminates the sustained catastrophe faced by an innocent person in prison and the civil death nearly everyone who has been incarcerated experiences attempting to restart their lives. Freed after nineteen years behind bars, Darryl Hunt became a national advocate for social justice, and his case inspired lasting reforms, among them a law that allows those on death row to appeal their sentence with evidence of racial bias. He was a beacon of hope for so many—until he could no longer bear the burden of what he had endured and took his own life. Fluidly crafted by a master journalist, Beyond Innocence makes an urgent moral call for an American reckoning with the legacies of racism in the criminal justice system and the human toll of the carceral state.

Author: Meredith Huey Dye
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538113031
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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The number of women in United States prisons has increased dramatically since the 1980s, and has in proportion outpaced that of men’s incarceration. Despite these numbers, incarcerated women, and women lifers specifically, represent a relatively small percentage of the overall correctional and lifer populations. As such, women lifers are easy to overlook, discount, and diminish as such a small group. Many women lifers perceive themselves as a forgotten group; most often those whom we “lock up” and “throw away the key”. They feel excluded from prison programming within and from their own families outside. They feel stigmatized by staff and other women in prison. Aging fast, many have real fears about declining health and losing family members over lengthy stretches of time. However, women lifers are some of the most resilient and strongest women who survive life in prison with the support of each other and religious faith, often transforming themselves in the process of doing time. While most of the women had extensive histories of trauma, abuse, and mental health issues, few had prior experience as offenders. Despite the term “lifer”, many of these women will be released from prison after serving long sentences. Beyond this basic profile, there is much more to learn and share about the lives of women lifers. Focusing on women’s pathways into prison, the ways they cope with life behind bars, and their diverse reentry needs, Meredith Dye and Ronald Aday give voice to women lifers and place their experiences within the larger context of penal harm policies. The authors look at their physical and mental health, family connections, adjustment to prison, prison supports and activities, and experiences with abuse/trauma; while also looking at the growing public and policy concerns over mass incarceration in general. Women Lifers provides insight into the lives of incarcerated women before, during, and following a life sentence, especially the population of those serving life sentences. With the growing numbers of women lifers in the United States, the authors emphasize the importance for the public and policymakers to understand the unique circumstances that brought these women to prison, the policies that keep them there, and the major challenges they face in carving out a successful life in prison and beyond.

Author: Ben Crewe
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 1137566019
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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This book analyses the experiences of prisoners in England & Wales sentenced when relatively young to very long life sentences (with minimum terms of fifteen years or more). Based on a major study, including almost 150 interviews with men and women at various sentence stages and over 300 surveys, it explores the ways in which long-term prisoners respond to their convictions, adapt to the various challenges that they encounter and re-construct their lives within and beyond the prison. Focussing on such matters as personal identity, relationships with family and friends, and the management of time, the book argues that long-term imprisonment entails a profound confrontation with the self. It provides detailed insight into how such prisoners deal with the everyday burdens of their situation, feelings of injustice, anger and shame, and the need to find some sense of hope, control and meaning in their lives. In doing so, it exposes the nature and consequences of the life-changing terms of imprisonment that have become increasingly common in recent years.

Author: Nancy Mullane
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 1610390296
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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An award-winning journalist and producer of This American Life traces the stories of five convicted murderers to assess their struggles for redemption, efforts toward parole and first steps in transitioning back to civilian life. 25,000 first printing.

Author: Lila Kazemian
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429856849
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Although the negative consequences of rising incarceration rates have been well-established, criminological research has largely neglected to document psychological, social, and behavioral changes that occur during periods of incarceration. Drawing on an original longitudinal study of long-term French prisoners, this book examines the process of desistance from crime and positive growth in prison. It offers reflections on how personal transformation can be achieved in prison, particularly among individuals serving long prison sentences. This research investigates the barriers to achieving positive growth in prison, as well as the different ways in which transformation can occur behind bars. It also conceptualizes the process of abandoning crime in prison, and sheds light on the cognitive, social, and structural factors that may trigger, accelerate, or hamper this process. This book explores the circumstances under which individuals can thrive in prison, and identifies key features of the narratives of prisoners who have achieved positive growth. The research presented in this book also examines the intricacies of returning to society after a lengthy period of time in prison. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book will be invaluable reading for those engaged in studies of criminology and criminal justice, sociology, criminal behavior, prisons, and penology. It is also aimed at a variety of audiences, including academics, practitioners, policy-makers, and prisoners.

Author: William H. Gass
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307957446
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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A dazzling new collection of essays—on reading, writing, form, and thought—from one of America’s master writers. It begins with the personal, both past and present. It emphasizes Gass’s lifelong attachment to books and moves on to the more analytical, as he ponders the work of some of his favorite writers (among them Kafka, Nietzsche, Henry James, Gertrude Stein, Proust). He writes about a few topics equally burning but less loved (the Nobel Prize–winner and Nazi sympathizer Knut Hamsun; the Holocaust). Finally, Gass ponders theoretical matters connected with literature: form and metaphor, and specifically, one of its genetic parts—the sentence. Gass embraces the avant-garde but applies a classic standard of writing to all literature, which is clear in these essays, or, as he describes them, literary judgments and accounts. Life Sentences is William Gass at his Gassian best.

Author: Charles J. Ogletree
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814762484
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Is life without parole the perfect compromise to the death penalty? Or is it as ethically fraught as capital punishment? This comprehensive, interdisciplinary anthology treats life without parole as “the new death penalty.” Editors Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. and Austin Sarat bring together original work by prominent scholars in an effort to better understand the growth of life without parole and its social, cultural, political, and legal meanings. What justifies the turn to life imprisonment? How should we understand the fact that this penalty is used disproportionately against racial minorities? What are the most promising avenues for limiting, reforming, or eliminating life without parole sentences in the United States? Contributors explore the structure of life without parole sentences and the impact they have on prisoners, where the penalty fits in modern theories of punishment, and prospects for (as well as challenges to) reform.

Author: Christopher Seeds
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520379977
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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"In recent decades, life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP) has developed into a distinctive penal form in the United States, one firmly entrenched in US policy-making, judicial and prosecutorial decision-making, correctional practice, and public discourse. LWOP is now a routine part of contemporary US criminal justice, even engrained in the nation's cultural imaginary, but how it came to be so remains in question. Fifty years ago, imprisoning a person until death was an extraordinary sentence; today, it accounts for an increasing percentage of all US prisoners. What explains the shifts in penal practice and the social imagination by which we have become accustomed to imprisoning individuals until death without any reevaluation or reasonable expectation of release? Combining a wide historical lens with detailed state- and institutional-level research, Death by Prison offers a provocative new foundation for questioning this deeply problematic practice that has escaped close scrutiny for too long. The rise of life without parole, this book demonstrates, is not simply a matter of growth: it is a phenomenon of change, inclusive of changes in definitions, practices, and meanings. Death by Prison shows that the complex processes by which life without parole became imprisonment until death and perpetual confinement became a routine part of American punishment must be understood not only in terms of punitive attitudes and political efforts but as a matter of background conditions and transformations in penal institutions. The book also reveals how the social and sociological relevance of life without parole extends beyond its punitive element: imbued in the history of life without parole are a variety of forms of disregard--for human dignity, for social consequences, and for the myriad responsibilities that go along with state punishment"--

Author: Reuben Jonathan Miller
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316451495
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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A "persuasive and essential" (Matthew Desmond) work that will forever change how we look at life after prison in America through Miller's "stunning, and deeply painful reckoning with our nation's carceral system" (Heather Ann Thompson). Each year, more than half a million Americans are released from prison and join a population of twenty million people who live with a felony record. Reuben Miller, a chaplain at the Cook County Jail in Chicago and now a sociologist studying mass incarceration, spent years alongside prisoners, ex-prisoners, their friends, and their families to understand the lifelong burden that even a single arrest can entail. What his work revealed is a simple, if overlooked truth: life after incarceration is its own form of prison. The idea that one can serve their debt and return to life as a full-fledge member of society is one of America's most nefarious myths. Recently released individuals are faced with jobs that are off-limits, apartments that cannot be occupied and votes that cannot be cast. As The Color of Law exposed about our understanding of housing segregation, Halfway Home shows that the American justice system was not created to rehabilitate. Parole is structured to keep classes of Americans impoverished, unstable, and disenfranchised long after they've paid their debt to society. Informed by Miller's experience as the son and brother of incarcerated men, captures the stories of the men, women, and communities fighting against a system that is designed for them to fail. It is a poignant and eye-opening call to arms that reveals how laws, rules, and regulations extract a tangible cost not only from those working to rebuild their lives, but also our democracy. As Miller searchingly explores, America must acknowledge and value the lives of its formerly imprisoned citizens. PEN America 2022 John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist Winner of the 2022 PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences 2022 PROSE Awards Finalist 2022 PROSE Awards Category Winner for Cultural Anthropology and Sociology An NPR Selected 2021 Books We Love As heard on NPR’s Fresh Air