What does it mean to face a life prison sentence? What have "lifers" learned about life--from having taken a life? Photographer Howard Zehr has interviewed and made portraits of men and women in Pennsylvania prisons who are serving life sentences without possibility of parole. Readers see the prisoners as people, de-mystified. Brief text accompanies each portrait, the voice of each prisoner speaking openly about the crime each has committed, the utter violation of another person each has caused. They speak of loneliness, missing their children growing up, dealing with the vacuum, caught between death and life. A timely book.
You can see by the pictures and words these men and women are not the same people they were many years ago when they were first put in prison. The pictures of each person put a face to the name and made them human.Long term life sentences is why our prisons are so full today and more have to be built. We will have the "nursing home" prisons where these inmates will have to spend the last days of their life as more and more inmates receive life sentences and grow old in prisons. There is no good purpose for this. I wish this book was required reading for every lawyer and judge. I wish the public would all read it also. Ann
Doing Life: Reflections on Men and Women Doing Life Sentenc
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 24 years ago
I bought this book several years ago and have since given it as a gift and used it in teaching opportunities. I have watched as people thumb through it and write down the ISPN # so that they can find/purchase it. It's has to be one of the best books around to make real the personalities of some of those who society has discarded through the process of incarceration. This book is not about criminal justice theory. It's about global humanity. It's TERRIFIC!
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