Life Imprisonment from Young Adulthood

Ben Crewe is Deputy Director of the Prisons Research Centre at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, UK. He is interested in all aspects of prison life, including prison management, staff-prisoner relationships, public and private sector imprisonment, penal power and prisoner social life.Susie Hulley is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, UK. She is interested in how young people are affected by the criminal justice system, particularly their experiences of criminalisation and imprisonment. Her recent work focuses on the application of ‘joint enterprise’ by criminal justice practitioners (including lawyers and the police) and the impact of this legal doctrine on young people.Serena Wright is a researcher and Lecturer in Criminology in the Department of Law and Criminology at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her research on prisons and penology has focusedon short-term sentences and post-release ‘frustrated desistance’ among women, and the experience of long-term incarceration among life-sentenced prisoners.. She is particularly interested in the intersection between trauma, addiction, and criminalisation, and between health, gender and criminal justice.

• 1. Introduction.- 2. Methods.- 3. Pen  Portraits.- 4. The Early Years.- 5. Coping And Adaptation.- 6.Social Relations.- 7. Identity and the Self.- 8. Time and Place.- 9. Discussion.

“The book offers a valuable and important contribution to sociological literature on long-term and life imprisonment. … The book presents honest and authentic accounts to reconsider the challenging implications of the topics explored. It contributes to social, criminological and geographical studies of incarceration and life course literature and will be of great interest to readers across these fields.” (Jayne Price, The British Journal of Criminology, April 21, 2020)