Prisoners’ Experiences of LWOP

Chapter 4 sheds light on the punishment’s extreme severity. It is commonly assumed that LWOP differs from traditional death sentences because it preserves prisoners’ lives. Drawing on the 299 letters written by men and women serving LWOP in California, this chapter reveals other meanings of death, complicating conventional categorizations of punishments. Prisoners’ testimonies point to the certainty of dying behind bars as well as to the concomitant impossibility to quantify the time left to serve. Death also takes on a more embodied dimension, provoked by ageing and diseased bodies, as well as through the removal of parenthood and parenting. Death under LWOP is characterized by an indifference for prisoners’ human capacity to change.