Still Doing Life: 22 Lifers, 25 Years Later

By Howard Zehr and Barb Toews

Side-by-side, time-lapse photos and interviews, separated by twenty-five years, of people serving life sentences in prison, by the bestselling author of The Little Book of Restorative Justice

“Shows the remarkable resilience of people sentenced to die in prison and raises profound questions about a system of punishment that has no means of recognizing the potential of people to change.” —Marc Mauer, senior adviser, The Sentencing Project, and co-author (with Ashley Nellis) of The Meaning of Life

“Life without parole is a death sentence without an execution date.” —Aaron Fox (lifer) from Still Doing Life

In 1996, Howard Zehr, a restorative justice activist and photographer, published Doing Life, a book of photo portraits of individuals serving life sentences without the possibility of parole in Pennsylvania prisons. Twenty-five years later, Zehr revisited many of the same individuals and photographed them in the same poses. In Still Doing Life, Zehr and co-author Barb Toews present the two photos of each individual side by side, along with interviews conducted at the two different photo sessions, creating a deeply moving of people who, for the past quarter century, have been trying to live meaningful lives while facing the likelihood that they will never be free.

In the tradition of other compelling photo books including Milton Rogovin’s Triptychs and Nicholas Nixon’s The Brown Sisters, Still Doing Life offers a riveting longitudinal look at a group of people over an extended period of time—in this case with complex and problematic implications for the American criminal justice system. Each night in the United States, more than 200,000 men and women incarcerated in state and federal prisons will go to sleep facing the reality that they may die without ever returning home. There could be no more compelling book to challenge readers to think seriously about the consequences of life sentences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The New Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781620977217

Howard Zehr

Howard Zehr is a distinguished professor of Restorative Justice at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. He is the author of the bestselling The Little Book of Restorative Justice and Doing Life, among other titles.

Book preview

Cover: Still Doing Life: 22 Lifers, 25 Years Later by Howard Zehr and Barb Toews

ALSO EDITED BY BARB TOEWS AND HOWARD ZEHR

Critical Issues in Restorative Justice

ALSO BY BARB TOEWS

The Little Book of Restorative Justice for People in Prison

ALSO BY HOWARD ZEHR

The Little Book of Restorative Justice

Changing Lenses:

Restorative Justice for Our Times

Doing Life:

Reflections of Men and Women Serving Life Sentences

Transcending:

Reflections of Crime Victims

What Will Happen to Me?

Still

Doing

Life

22 LIFERS,

25 YEARS LATER

Howard Zehr and Barb Toews

We dedicate this book to the memory of Sharon Peachie Wiggins, who died in 2013 while serving a life sentence. Originally sentenced to death for a crime she committed at seventeen, Peachie had her sentence commuted to life without parole in 1971. As is apparent from interviews in this book, she inspired and mentored many, leaving a legacy that continues today. Peachie was a participant in the phase of this project that began in the early 1990s, with an extensive interview featured in Doing Life.

Dr. Lance Couturier, former director of psychological services for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, had an essential role in envisioning and facilitating this project. Without his encouragement and assistance, it never would have happened. We regret that he did not live to see its completion.

Contents

Introduction

We made a mistake, and it was a bad mistake! We can’t erase that mistake and draw on the board again so it’ll be alright. But what we can do is use that mistake to help others not make that mistake.

—Commer Glass

Don’t let what you did, your crime, define who you are. If you let that define you, you’re done. You’ll never see the potential you have to become someone other than an inmate.

—Cyd Berger

Each night in the United States, more than 206,000 of the 1.5 million men and women incarcerated in state and federal prisons go to sleep with the reality that they may die without ever returning home.¹ The vast majority of these individuals are eligible for parole consideration at some point during their sentence, but more than 55,000 are serving life without the possibility of parole. Of these, 2,300 were children under the age of eighteen at the time of the crime for which they were convicted.² The only hope for release for those serving life without parole is clemency or a pardon from the governor of the state in which they are incarcerated or, in federal cases, the president. The rarity of these reprieves has contributed to this sentence being colloquially known as death by incarceration.

Despite dropping crime rates over the past several decades, life sentences have increased dramatically. Prior to 1970, only seven states had laws allowing for life sentences without the possibility of parole. By 2012, this number had grown to forty-nine states, Washington DC, and the federal government. In twenty-nine of these states and the federal government, life without parole is the only sentencing option for some criminal convictions, such as first-degree murder.³ However, current criminal justice reform efforts suggest that support for life sentences is waning, and dialogues are being opened about the harmful experience and consequences of life sentences for not only incarcerated individuals but also for survivors of violence and society at large.

What is it like to serve a life sentence? How does one cope, grow, and change as a person? Do life sentences bring about an experience of justice for survivors—does it attend to their needs and hold accountable the person who committed violence against them? Does incarcerating someone for life make society safer? Are there other ways to effectively achieve public safety and reduce harm without permanently removing someone from society?

This book invites you to explore questions like these in two ways. You will see the faces and hear the words of twenty-two women and men serving life sentences (known as lifers) without the possibility of parole in Pennsylvania at two points during their incarceration, twenty-five years apart (early 1990s and 2017).⁴ By taking a decades-long look at how these individuals have coped in prison, made sense of their lives, and grown as community members, we have an extraordinary opportunity to learn firsthand how aspects of their time spent incarcerated have stayed the same and have changed, for better or worse. These men and women also share their perspectives and opinions on criminal justice policies as they relate to life sentences, commutation, and other types of criminal justice reform. The interviews end with John Frederick Nole, released in 2019 and reinterviewed in 2021, who reflects on his life sentence from the comfort of home. Although the people depicted here are just a small fraction of the approximately 5,400 individuals serving life sentences without the possibility of parole in Pennsylvania, their emotions, challenges, triumphs, and journeys through life share similar themes.

A closing essay explores life sentences as both a unique human experience and public policy issue through the lens of trauma, race and racialized trauma, and restorative justice. This examination introduces the relationships among trauma, violent behavior, punishment, racism, and racial disparity in the criminal justice system. The essay ends with lessons we can learn from the men and women in this book about trauma healing, and also offers a vision for ways to achieve justice that do not rely on extreme sentences—ways that heal, rather than harm, those who have committed violence, survivors, and communities as a whole.

As authors and compilers of this book, we have clear opinions and concerns about life sentences as both policy and a form of justice, and their impact on the men and women who serve them. Nevertheless, our underlying goal in this book is to encourage dialogue rather than take a rigid position. In doing so, we also wish to humanize those who have committed violence and are serving life sentences. We hope that you will read and use this book in the same way.

The Portraits and Interviews

Howard Zehr

I first photographed and interviewed the men and women featured here in the early 1990s, which culminated in my 1996 book Doing Life: Reflections of Men and Women Serving Life Sentences. At the time, I received support and feedback from organizations working with lifers at Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania, as well as from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, and met with around seventy-five men and women serving life sentences in Pennsylvania prisons. The lifers were suggested to me by members of lifer organizations and sometimes prison staff or volunteers. I asked only that people interviewed be able to reflect on their situations and that they represent a variety of ethnicities, ages, and perspectives. As I said in Doing Life, I make no claims that this is a scientifically selected cross section of lifers; those who have been overwhelmed by their circumstances, who have not managed to mature and change for the better, are undoubtedly underrepresented.

As the years passed, I often thought about returning to do updated portraits and interviews with the people from Doing Life, to see how and what they were doing, but the Department of Corrections policy had changed and access was impossible. Then in 2017 the former director of psychological services for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, Lance Couturier, encouraged me to try again. With his help, I received permission to repeat the project on a smaller scale. In 2017, twenty-five years after the first visit, Lance and I revisited two dozen of the women and men from Doing Life, selected to create a fair representation of the original group.

My purpose in these documentary projects was and is to encourage a genuine dialogue about justice. So much of our discussion on crime and wrongdoing is based on labels and stereotypes. By allowing people to present themselves to us, without visual cues that trigger stereotypes, I hope to encourage a dialogue about real people, real ideas. Too often, the way people are presented encourages us to see them as other than us. I wanted to reduce othering and encourage human connections.

As a society, we have predetermined ideas about people in prison, which are often triggered and reinforced by archetypical prison photographs and the unilateral way people are shown. I set out to avoid these visual cues by photographing people with a neutral background, respectfully, as I would want to be portrayed. In the early sessions, lifers were allowed to have a set of street clothes in their cells and wear them on special occasions, including the photo sessions. That policy has changed, however, so in the 2017 portraits they are wearing prison garb. They are also seated in roughly the same pose as in the original photo, looking directly into the camera and inviting the reader to look back at them.

Acknowledging Our Bias and Language

Barb Toews and Howard Zehr

If our portraits were in this book, you would see that we are both white, of European descent. We acknowledge that we have benefited from a society that values white people over Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC); these benefits extend to socioeconomic status, educational achievements, and experience with violence and the justice system, to name a few. Who we are ultimately shapes how we understand what the lifers have shared with us and how we share it with you. The men and women featured here have trusted us with their images and stories. We have taken great care to see and listen well, recognizing the limits of our own bias. As you read, we encourage you to also consider how who you are influences how you understand who they are.

We are also aware of how labels can dehumanize people and reduce them to a single identity. Offenders are more than just people who offend, and victims are more than just people who have been harmed. Lifers are more than just people serving a life sentence. One person can be all these things at once, in addition to being a mother or father, a teacher, an artist, a writer, and more. Especially in this book, where the closing essay will discuss the ways in which victimization can lead to harmful behavior, labels fail to capture a complex experience. Even naming harmful behavior as a crime or an offense is a form of reductionism; these are labels that the criminal justice system has applied to such behavior and, as we will suggest in the concluding chapter, can distract us from the underlying harm caused by the perpetrator and the responsibility to repair. Choosing what language to use can be tricky, as there is no agreement among those impacted about what words and labels are best to use. While we do use these labels on occasion, we have used a variety of language and phrases to make clear what particular experience we are referring to.

Kimerly Joynes

You have to come to a point where you believe goodness feels better than the pain you have endured

Early 1990s

A life sentence is like being on the outer regions of the outer limits, a voyage into the deepest part of negativity you could ever imagine. It’s a black hole of pain and anxiety that you must learn to overcome through spirituality.

Prisoners help each other rehabilitate themselves. It’s a fantasy that you’re going to come to an institution and they’re going to help you with your problems. If we don’t help ourselves, we won’t get any help.

People, even staff members, forget you are a person. They might have a bad day, yell and scream, or lie about a situation, or talk to you like an animal in a zoo. You have to psych yourself up just