Life Without Parole, America's Other Death Penalty

• DOI: 10.1177/0032885508319256
• Date: 01 June 2008
• Author: Sandra McGunigall-Smith,Robert Johnson
• Published date: 01 June 2008
• Subject Matter: Articles

Life Without Parole,

America’s Other Death

Penalty

Notes on Life Under Sentence of

Death by Incarceration

Robert Johnson

American University, Washington, D.C.

Sandra McGunigall-Smith

Utah Valley University, Orem

Life without parole is examined as a form of death penalty, namely, death by

incarceration as distinct from death by execution. Original interviews with a

sample of prisoners (condemned prisoners and life-without-parole prisoners)

and prison officers are used to develop a picture of the experience of life under

sentence of death by incarceration. It is argued that offenders sentenced to

death by incarceration do not pose a special danger to others in the prison

world or in the free world and that the suffering they experience is compara-

ble to the suffering endured by condemned prisoners. Life without parole

thus emerges as a viable alternative to the capital punishment.

Keywords: prison adjustment; life without parole; death by incarceration;

death penalty; capital punishment; supermax

Life without parole is sometimes called a “true life sentence” because

offenders are sentenced to spend the remainder of their natural lives in

prison. A better term for this sentence might be death by incarceration,as

these persons are, in effect, sentenced to die in prison. Indeed, it is argued

here that the sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole can

be equally as painful as the death penalty, albeit in different ways. The sen-

tence can thus be thought of as “our other death penalty.”

The Prison Journal

Volume 88 Number 2

June 2008 328-346

© 2008 Sage Publications

10.1177/0032885508319256

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328

Authors’ Note: We wish to thank Jordan E. Segal for his helpful background research and

thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Offenders sentenced to death by incarceration suffer a “civil death.” Their

freedom—the essential feature of our civil society—has come to a permanent

end. These prisoners are physically alive, of course, but they live only in

prison. It might be better to say they “exist” in prison, as prison life is but a

pale shadow of life in the free world. Their lives are steeped in suffering. The

prison is their cemetery, a cell their tomb. If we as a society were to limit life

without parole to aggravated murders, as we try to do with capital punish-

ment, it could be argued that lifers1give their civil lives in return for the nat-

ural lives they have taken (see Johnson, 1984, 1998). Under this formulation,

use of life sentences for crimes short of capital murder would be excessive

and unjust. By the same token, capital punishment would be entirely unnec-

essary, as capital murder would be adequately punished by “our other death

penalty,” death by incarceration.2

Objections to replacing death by execution with death by incarceration

relate to public safety (e.g., are lifers a danger to others in prison or the out-

side world?) and adequacy of punishment (e.g., is a life sentence sufficient

punishment for capital murder?). As we shall see, life without parole does not

pose a special risk to public safety and is a sanction of great severity,arguably

comparable to the death sentence in the suffering it entails. Moreover, it is

worth noting that one of the unique features of death by incarceration is that

it allows a large window of time—much larger than that afforded by the death

penalty—for evidence of innocence to emerge and thus permits the release

and perhaps compensation of persons wrongly sentenced to prison for life.

A Note on Method

In portions of this article, we draw heavily on McGunigall-Smith’s unpub-

lished doctoral research conducted at Utah State Prison from 1997 to 2002.

McGunigall-Smith conducted structured, tape-recorded interviews with 7 of

the 11 men on Utah State Prison’s death row (4 inmates refused to speak with

her) as well as with an opportunity sample of 22 prisoners serving life without

parole and an opportunity sample of 34 staff members assigned to super-

vise condemned prisoners and prisoners serving life without possibility of

parole. Given the limits of sampling (a small death row group and nonrandom

samples of life sentence prisoners and correctional staff), we use quotations

from interviews for two main exploratory purposes: (1) to illustrate themes

widely shared by McGunigall-Smith’s participants and (2) to shed further

light on themes firmly established in the ethnographic literature on prison life

and adjustment. For more details on method, consult McGunigall-Smith

(2004a, pp. 89-107).

Johnson, McGunigall-Smith / Life Without Parole 329