This book analyses the experiences of prisoners in England & Wales sentenced when relatively young to very long life sentences (with minimum terms of fifteen years or more). Based on a major study, including almost 150 interviews with men and women at various sentence stages and over 300 surveys, it explores the ways in which long-term prisoners respond to their convictions, adapt to the various challenges that they encounter and re-construct their lives within and beyond the prison. Focussing on such matters as personal identity, relationships with family and friends, and the management of time, the book argues that long-term imprisonment entails a profound confrontation with the self. It provides detailed insight into how such prisoners deal with the everyday burdens of their situation, feelings of injustice, anger and shame, and the need to find some sense of hope, control and meaning in their lives. In doing so, it exposes the nature and consequences of the life-changing terms of imprisonment that have become increasingly common in recent years.

“In all the attention to mass imprisonment in recent years, criminologists have only turned recently to what is clearly one of the most significant and problematic features of it: life sentences with no possibility of release for decades, especially when imposed on the very young. In Life Imprisonment from Young Adulthood, Crewe, Hulley, and Wright go beyond the legal transformations that have accompanied this revolution in punishment in England and Wales, to give us the deepest empirical look at adaptation and survival in long-term imprisonment for over forty years; a generation that has seen the life imprisonment sanction explode across the common law world.” (Professor Jonathan Simon, The University of California, Berkeley, USA)

“Life imprisonment from Young Adulthood is meticulously researched, imaginatively constructed, elegantly written and quietly passionate about the injustices and cruelties surrounding its subject matter. It will undoubtedly quickly become a classic in the canon of sociological studies of the prison” (Professor Yvonne Jewkes, University of Bath, UK)

“Life Imprisonment from Young Adulthood is a masterwork of social science. By probing the outer edges of crime and punishment, Crewe, Hulley and Wright shed a bright light on timeless questions about human nature that are at the heart of our understanding of crime and punishment” (Professor Robert Johnson, American University, USA)

Appeals to practitioners working in prison and probation services Speaks to scholars and students of law, political science and human rights Draws on the largest sociological study of long-term imprisonment ever conducted in Europe

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