Description
Book SynopsisIn 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 practice, but how it came to be so remains in question. Fifty years ago, imprisonment of a person until death was an extraordinary punishment; today, it accounts for the sentences of an increasing number of prisoners in the United States. What explains the shifts in penal practice and social imagination by which we have become accustomed to imprisoning people until death without any reevaluation or 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.
Trade Review"Seeds does a masterful job of busting the myth of how [life without parole] replaced the death penalty." * Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books *
"Christopher Seeds’ Death by Prison is a comprehensive and compelling origin story of a sentence that is a crime against human decency. . . . This book is essential reading for all students of crime and punishment."
* Social Forces *
Table of ContentsContents
Introduction
Part I Foundations
1. Perpetual Penal Confinement
2. Precursor and Prototype
3. The Phenomenon to Be Explained
Part II Eruptions
4. The Complex Role of Death Penalty Abolition
5. The Collapse of a Penal Paradigm
6. Governors and Prisoners
Part III Adaptation and Solidification
7. The US Supreme Court’s Ambivalent Crafting of LWOP
8. Abolition and the Alternative
9. Life Prisoners, Lifetime Prisons
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
