Doing Life: Reflections of Men & Women Serving Life Sentences [Paperback]

Howard Zehr (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 1996

A photographic collection of interviews with men and women serving life sentences in prison provides illuminating portraits of the prisoners as they candidly discuss their crimes and and their impact and reflect on their feelings, loneliness, and coping with prison life. Original. 15,000 first printing. IP.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Pennsylvania, home of the Quakers, was once associated with prison reform. Today, it has one of the harshest sentencing systems in the country. A conviction of first- or second-degree murder carries an automatic sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. What is it like to be locked up for life? Zehr, a writer and consultant on criminal-justice issues, asked this question of 70 men and women lifers. Their answers appear here in short interviews next to Zehr's black-and-white photographs of the respondents. The interviews are surprisingly upbeat commentaries on the meaning of life as well as on life sentences. But the photographs are the most compelling. Shot against a plain muslin background with a "looking at the camera" style of portrait, the subjects are real people, not statistics in a criminal justice log book. The total effect is memorable. Highly recommended.?Frances Sandiford, Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

"We tend not to see victims or offenders as real people," Zehr points out in his introduction to this collection of photos and edited interviews with nearly 60 individuals serving life-without-parole sentences in Pennsylvania prisons. Photographer-interviewer Zehr (director of the Mennonite Central Committee's U.S. Office on Crime and Justice) has been active in promoting victim offender reconciliation programs and in developing a "restorative justice" concept focused on accountability. Zehr's street-clothes portraits capture these Pennsylvania "lifers" in a variety of moods. Some supply only a brief, haunting description ("a vacuum," "a black hole of pain and anxiety" ) in response to the question "What is it like to be locked up for life?" while others--particularly several who had a chance to compare a photo of how they looked at the time they were jailed with a current Polaroid--reflect at length on their lives outside and inside prison walls. This powerful look at the broad variety of people serving life terms challenges our conventional wisdom's myths and stereotypes. Mary Carroll

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Product Details

• Paperback: 121 pages
• Publisher: Good Books (December 31, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156148203X
• ISBN-13: 978-1561482030
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 8.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #233,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Making Lifers Human, September 26, 2000

By 

Ann Atkinson "Anntnwv" (Antioch, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Doing Life: Reflections of Men & Women Serving Life Sentences (Paperback)

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

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Doing Life: Reflections on Men and Women Doing Life Sentenc, March 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Doing Life: Reflections of Men & Women Serving Life Sentences (Paperback)

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!