Doing Life: Reflections Of Men And Women Serving Life Sentences

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