Trajectories of hope/lessness among men and women in the late stage of a life sentence

Abstract

Drawing on Snyder's ‘hope theory’ as a conceptual framework, this article examines the hope narratives of men and women at the ‘late stage’ of a life sentence. The article aims to bridge the existing gap between jurisprudence and sociological accounts on hope and life imprisonment by extending this debate to men and women serving reducible life sentences in England and Wales, for whom release is not guaranteed but assumed to be attainable. Through focusing on the individual ways in which the spectre and procedural elements of release shape narratives of hope and hopelessness, this article agrees with Vannier that recent human rights debates have fallen short in terms of subjectively understanding the complex relationship between ‘hope’ and ‘release’ for life-sentenced prisoners. It concludes by highlighting the necessity of procedural legitimacy in reducing uncertainty and promoting and maintaining hope among this group.

Introduction

Recent legislative challenges have introduced into international jurisprudence the idea that ‘hope’ represents a fundamental right for prisoners serving capital or life without parole (LWOP)/‘whole life’ sentences ¹ (see, for example, Vannier, 2016; Wheelwright, 2017). In some jurisdictions, this has resulted in the prohibition of life sentences that are non-reducible (those from which release is not normally granted), ² on the grounds that forcing an individual to ‘abandon any hope of ever regaining [their] freedom’ attacks their human dignity (Van Zyl Smit and Appleton, 2019: 298). However, Vannier (2016: 190) argues that hope has been ‘narrowly construed’ in legal debates on this matter, which have tended to focus on the presence or absence of de jure and de facto reducibility (respectively, whether the possibility of release exists in law, and whether or not a ‘realistic prospect’ of release exists in practice). Meanwhile, accounts of the subjective experience of hope and reducible life imprisonment (in which release is possible) have remained conspicuous by their absence. As a consequence, attention has been largely drawn away from the ‘more fundamental’ questions about the humanity and legitimacy of such sentences (Vannier, 2016: 209). There is also little evidence that the lived ‘complexity’ of hope has been acknowledged within these discussions (Seeds, 2021).

Sociological accounts of hope among people serving life sentences have also been limited to some extent by the disproportionate emphasis on non-reducible life sentences (chiefly LWOP) and focus on penal systems in North America (e.g. Johnson and Leigey, 2020; Johnson and McGunigall-Smith, 2008; Leigey, 2015; Leigey and Ryder, 2015; Seeds, 2021; Wheelwright, 2017) and Europe (Vannier, 2016). Since the expectation and possibility of release is built into the very logic of all but a small minority of life sentences in England and Wales, ³ it is therefore likely that the operation and meaning of hope—as well as its diminishment and loss—within this specific geographical, cultural and penal context is shaped by different forces than those accounted for in much of the existing work.

In response to the comparatively small body of research on hope among people serving reducible life sentences, and the broad absence of subjective accounts of such experiences in recent human rights debates on life imprisonment, Vannier (2016: 209) has called for penologists to invest more energy into generating ‘testimonies’ with this group. Grounded in an inductive analysis of data from 33 male and female ‘late-stage’ ⁴ participants in a broader study of life imprisonment from a young age, this article responds to Vannier's call by constructing a targeted analysis of hope narratives among lifers who are approaching or have surpassed their minimum tariff: those for whom the battle for release is often most tangible and most painful (Mason, 1990). This is approached via the conceptual framework of Snyder's (2000) ‘hope theory’, which provides a useful mechanism for considering how hope is formed and dashed within the context of goals, pathways and agency among life-sentenced prisoners as they strive for release.

In doing so, one of our aims is to bridge the current gap between human rights and sociological debates on hope and life imprisonment, and to extend this discussion by drawing on subjective accounts to enhance our understanding of how the notion of reducibility is experienced by people approaching or surpassing the tariff endpoint (when, for the first time, release might be technically possible). We also aim to attend to Vannier's (2016: 209–210) demand to ‘provide useful information’ for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners about the lived experience of de facto reducibility (that is, ‘whether, when and how suitable opportunities were made available’ to people serving life sentences). In concluding, the implications of these discussions are framed in terms of the need to reduce uncertainty and enhance procedural legitimacy among late-stage lifers as it pertains to the pursuit of release.

Hope and life imprisonment

Hope and the loss of hope distinguish lifers from all other [prisoners].

(Liem, 2016: 84)

Hope for a lifer is […] dangerous. […] It stops you sleeping and can drive you insane—much safer to expect nothing and never to be disappointed.

(James, 2013)

In some sense, the notion of ‘hope’ is an omnipresent feature across the landscape of prison sociology. The beneficial aspects of hope have specific relevance to surviving (and sometimes ‘thriving’) under conditions of confinement (e.g. Liebling et al., 2019; Pratt and Foster, 2020) and encouraging individuals to ‘find a life worth living for’ (Martin and Stermac, 2010: 703). More than this, hope plays an important motivational role in prison-based desistance projects, as noted by Kazemian (2020) in her study of long-term prisoners in France, and Van Ginneken (2015) in her study of men and women serving determinate sentences of less than five years in England. In their small post-release study of men serving determinate sentences in Israel, Vignansky et al. (2018: 347) identified hope as the belief in a ‘better and more meaningful future’. Yet critically, scholars also draw attention to the darker side of hope in prisons, particularly in terms of the consequences of ‘false’ or ‘fairy tale’ notions of hope (Van Ginneken, 2015: 14; see also Seeds, 2021; Vignansky et al., 2018).

Existing commentary on the pains of indeterminate sentences, ⁵ including reducible life sentences, has also considered hope within the context of near-constant ambivalence associated with the absence of a fixed release date and the need to satisfy the Parole Board that release is warranted before it can be granted. According to Kummerlowe (1995: 42, emphasis added), these uncertainties ‘contribute more than any other factor’ to the ‘debilitating effects’ of life imprisonment.

The ongoing feeling of uncertainty generated by these specific penal features is often compounded by the ‘total arbitrariness’ and opacity that many indeterminate sentenced prisoners feel governs their existence (Crewe, 2011: 513). Yet while these feelings of ambivalence pervade the entirety of an indeterminate sentence, the magnitude and nature of this challenge appears to vary over time (see, for example, Crewe et al., 2020, 2017; Hulley et al., 2016; Leigey and Ryder, 2015; Liem, 2016; O’Donnell, 2014; Wright et al., 2017, 2021). According to O’Donnell (2014), for example, prisoners approaching the tariff endpoint of an indeterminate sentence—the earliest possible release date for this group—experience this not with hope but considerable stress and ‘trepidation’. That is, rather than generating positive feelings about potential futures, being confronted with the increasing temporal proximity of the tariff endpoint can be an inherently destabilizing experience, as individuals are forced suddenly to confront the future in a manner that arouses ‘old anxieties and new uncertainties’ (O’Donnell, 2014: 205). This turbulence is exacerbated by a felt lack of transparency within a progression and parole system in which pathways to freedom often feel ‘unclear’ or ‘unattainable’ (Crewe, 2011: 514), contributing to a ‘sense of stagnation’, frustration and hopelessness (Richardson, 2012: 153).

According to Mason (1990: 115), the experience of remaining imprisoned beyond the tariff expiry point (that is, those who become post-tariff prisoners) represents perhaps the most significant negative ‘turning point’ in the hope trajectories of indeterminate prisoners. As time served in custody beyond that point increases, the capacity for hope declines. Each setback cumulatively increases uncertainty and the fear that release will never be granted until, eventually, the individual reaches a point at which ‘all hope’—of release, and perhaps for life itself—ultimately ‘dissolves’ (Mason, 1990: 115). For some, the eventual response is to ‘retreat’ from release; a surrender to the inevitability of dying in captivity (Woodrow, 2016).

Hope also features significantly in debates regarding the legitimacy and legality of sentences of LWOP (known as ‘whole life orders’ in England and Wales). As Johnson and McGunigall-Smith note, a prison sentence of any length ‘holds hope hostage’ until the point of release. It therefore follows, they argue, that LWOP sentences (a form of life sentence from which individuals are rarely released) all but eradicate most forms of hope (Johnson and McGunigall-Smith, 2008: 339). Such sanctions represent de facto death sentences, and since successful appeals for commutations are rare (Johnson and Leigey, 2020; Leigey, 2015), hopelessness and ‘defeat’ among LWOP prisoners are common (Johnson and McGunigall-Smith, 2008).

Yet hope (most commonly of eventual release) can survive under such extreme conditions; indeed, it plays a crucial role in motivating LWOP prisoners to take care of themselves physically and mentally and is perhaps the most important protective factor against suicide among this population (see, for example, Johnson and Leigey, 2020; Johnson and McGunigall-Smith, 2008; Leigey, 2015). In addition to hope grounded in ‘institutional’ and ‘escapist’ desires for release, Seeds (2021: 14) also notes the importance of ‘deep’ or ‘transformational’ hope in surviving whole life imprisonment, in which individuals focus on actively and agentically constructing a more ‘ethical’ self (see also Crewe et al., 2020: 197).

While such studies are instructive about the factors which facilitate and frustrate hope among LWOP prisoners, such sentences are but one form of life imprisonment. As noted by Vannier (2016), significantly less legal and academic attention has been given to the role and possibility of hope among individuals serving reducible life sentences, in which release is almost always the norm, and as a consequence, their legitimacy subjected to considerably less scrutiny within human rights debates. Given that almost 7000 men and women are serving life sentences of this nature in England and Wales—more than any other nation in Europe (more, in fact, than Germany, Russia, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands and Scandinavia combined) (Prison Reform Trust, 2019)—this represents a sizeable gap in the existing literature. Two key exceptions exist. First, Styles (2018) examined the dual role of hope, as both a ‘source of resilience’ and something that was profoundly ‘damaging’ to individual well-being (2018: 2) among men designated Category A prisoners ⁶ in English high security prisons, the majority of whom were serving life sentences. Second, Crewe, Hulley and Wright's work on life imprisonment from a young age in England and Wales has considered ‘hope’ within various aspects of this experience; for example, within the context of sentence stage, the development of coping mechanisms and finding meaning and purpose in one's sentence (see, most notably, Crewe et al., 2020).

Yet while these discussions of hope are implicitly concerned with release, these studies have to date focused predominantly on individuals who are many years from their tariff end, and therefore procedurally and temporally distant from release. It is therefore unclear whether the possibilities of hope and release grow, diminish or shift, and in what ways, as the finishing line of the tariff expiry date appears on the horizon and often disappears in the rear-view mirror. Further, the broad lack of conceptualization of hope within studies of imprisonment (Styles (2018) and Van Ginneken (2015) represent notable exceptions) means that our subjective understanding of such penal experiences has been removed from the rich sociological and psychological frameworks of hope that have been developed to make sense of how it is nurtured, flourishes and degrades. It is to such frameworks that we now turn.

What is ‘hope’?

According to Gallagher et al. (2018: 353–354), Snyder's ‘hope theory’ represents one of the most ‘dominant’, ‘useful’ and ‘robust’ models for conceptualizing hope and its role in human ‘resilience’ and ‘flourishing’ within the field of positive psychology. Within this arena, hope has been constructed as a tangible phenomenon; one which is empirically measurable through attending to the conceptual trinity of ‘goals, pathways, and agency’ (Snyder, 2000: 9).

According to Snyder (2000), four conditions must be fulfilled in order for hope to flourish: first, a clear aspiration, focused on a specific objective (goal); second, a sense of ‘goal-directed determination’ and a belief that a viable and accessible route to that goal exists (pathway); and third, possession of a sense of self-efficacy which makes reaching the goal via the identified pathway feel possible (agency). It is the emphasis on specific goals (rather than an individual's broader worldview) and the presence of agency that distinguishes hope from optimism, which Rand (2018: 47) defines as a more ‘generalized expectancy that good as opposed to bad things will happen’. The fourth and final prerequisite for hope formation relates to an individually assessed probability of attainment. As Snyder (2000: 9) notes, research has consistently found that hope flourishes most among people who believe there to be an ‘intermediate probability’ of goal success. In this sense, Snyder views ‘hope’ as existing in the mid-range of a certainty continuum when considering future outcomes, as probability assessments situated at the extremes of the scale (i.e. where an outcome is either inevitable or physically impossible) render hope unnecessary. That is, if hope exists to offer beleaguered individuals the means to believe that ‘things can be better’ or possible in the future (Perkins, 2006: 119), it is irrelevant or inaccessible to persons who are steadfastly certain of a desired outcome, or those who are fatalistically confident of failure. Hope is only possible under conditions in which goal attainment has a degree of ‘uncertainty’ attached to it (Snyder, 2000: 9). This is an important note to which we will return.

The study of hope extends to fields as diverse as medicine, theology, philosophy, education, nursing, sociology and psychology, where its importance is acknowledged in measuring, understanding and improving ‘resilience and human flourishing’ (Gallagher et al., 2018: 353). Within these studies, the chief function of hope is consistently acknowledged in terms of fostering the capacity to cope with adverse circumstances (Perkins, 2006) and has been empirically linked to positive outcomes, including improved goal attainment, enhanced coping capacities, better mental well-being and reduced suicidality (Rand, 2018). Among disempowered groups in particular, it represents a vital tool in motivating people to fight in the present by projecting forward into a vision of a better and desired future; one in which the ‘forces of injustice’ may at last be overcome (hooks, 2003: xiv).

It is important to note that Snyder's framework represents but one means of conceptualizing ‘hope’, a notion which has long eluded a singular definition or a consensus on its value or role in the subjective lives of individuals. Yet as Seeds (2021; see also hooks, 2003) notes, the ‘complex and multidimensional’ nature of hope as evidenced here appears to have been overlooked in much of the recent jurisprudence regarding whole life/LWOP sentences in the USA and Europe. Here, hope has been typically constructed as a unidimensional and ‘binary’ notion; something an individual either has or does not have, ‘leaving the concept's complexity untouched’ (2021: 2). Seeds’ analysis adds an important element to how hope is understood within criminal justice and legal settings by arguing that hope does not solely hinge on legal and procedural roots, and that other factors—those which might both help and hinder in striving to survive LWOP imprisonment—must be accounted for.

Drawing these diverse strands together, a more thorough and conceptual examination of the operation and experience of hope/lessness among men and women serving reducible life sentences is overdue. Specifically, this should be oriented temporally to experiences around the expiration of minimum tariff, a juncture which Mason (1990: 115) identifies as a ‘turning point’ for hope. Further, since hopelessness is more broadly correlated with poor health outcomes (Clarke, 2003), there is an ethical obligation to extend existing human rights jurisprudence regarding dignity and life imprisonment. This can be achieved through sociological analyses of the personal testimonies of individuals serving life sentences, which should offer a more thorough and conceptual reflection on ‘hope’ and its diminishment. Additionally, there may be some value in considering the implications and relevance of Snyder's theory (in which ‘uncertainty’ is an essential prerequisite for hope to flourish) to the specific circumstances of indeterminate life-sentenced prisoners, for whom the burdens and pains of ‘uncertainty’ are well documented.

Attending to these concerns, this article asks what factors serve to facilitate and diminish hope among late-stage life-sentenced prisoners in England and Wales, and what consequences arise as a result of these processes. It also highlights the implications of hope's growth and reduction for individual prisoners, the Prison Service and for the broader human rights debate regarding the legitimacy of reducible life imprisonment.

Methods

The data drawn on below were generated during semi-structured interviews with males (n = 27) and females (n = 6) at the ‘late stage’ of a reducible (non-‘whole life’) life sentence in England and Wales. Individuals were identified as ‘late’ if they were within two years of their tariff expiry date, or beyond. This sampling criterion was intended to capture individuals who were procedurally close to release (since the tariff expiry represents the earliest possible point for this to occur), as well as those who had already passed this point. These data were generated as part of a broader cross-sectional mixed-methods study of life-sentenced prisoners, specifically, of men and women serving a life sentence with a minimum tariff of 15 years or more, which they received when they were 25 or younger (for a detailed discussion of the full study and its research methods, please see Crewe et al., 2020). Late-stage participants (n = 33) accounted for 23% of the total interview sample (n = 147).

In terms of the group demographics, late-stage participants were predominantly male, in their mid-40s and from a white British or white Irish ethnic group (n = 25), while the remaining participants identified as Black/Black British (n = 4), Asian-British (n = 4) and Asian (n = 1). The group's mean age at interview was 44.9 years (SD = 8.4), and 20.8 years (SD = 2.3) at sentencing. They had received a mean tariff of 18.6 years (SD = 3.4) and had served a continuous period of in custody of 23.7 years (SD = 7.86). The distribution of the standard deviation highlights the broad spread of the data in relation to specific variables, most notably, age at interview, tariff length and time served. For instance, late-stage participants’ age at interview ranged from 30 to 66 years old, while minimum tariffs varied from a little over 14 years (reduced from 26 years on appeal) to 25 years. The most significant disparity was found in the data on ‘time served’, which ranged from 12.5 years to 42 years, meaning almost three decades in custody separated the individual with the least to the most time served. Of particular significance to the analysis is the fact that two-thirds (n = 22) of the late-stage participants were post-tariff (i.e. had remained in custody beyond their tariff expiry/earliest release date), while a third (n = 11) had two years or fewer to this point (and are therefore referred to as pre-tariff in the analysis).

Each interview was conducted in two parts: a life history interview, which drew heavily on the literature on narrative inquiry (e.g. Hollway and Jefferson, 2000), followed by an exploration of participants’ experiences of their sentence. For the analysis, each interview was transcribed verbatim, then coded using NVivo software. We proceeded based on a broadly iterative approach; a dialogic method grounded in constant interpretation, reflection and revision data (for more detail on the research process, see Crewe et al., 2020). It was this inductive process which led us to adopt Snyder's model of ‘hope’, owing to congruence between the theory's key components (goals, pathways, agency) and the focus of late-stage participants’ narratives when discussing release.

Finding hope in the late stages of a life sentence

In England and Wales, all life-sentenced prisoners are procedurally eligible for their first pre-tariff review three years prior to the end date of their minimum tariff period. The purpose of this review is for the Parole Board ⁷ to make a recommendation on suitability for open conditions, which for most lifers is a pre-cursor to eventual release.

For the late-stage men and women in our study, arriving at an open prison therefore marked one of the most important steps in the progression towards returning to life at liberty, considerably expanding capacities for hope formation. For the men, the open estate offered their first opportunity to access release on temporary licence ⁸ (hereafter ROTL), allowing them to leave the prison on a regular basis. This experience could transform hitherto abstract possibilities into a tangible and believable ‘reality’. Frank (open conditions, served >25 years), who had yet to reach his tariff expiry date, felt significant uncertainty about what the future might hold for him, but described how ROTL had allowed him to feel for the first time that a positive life post-release was ‘possible’ and personally accessible to him, as long as he followed the correct process. Similar to Frank, and consistent with Snyder's model, Eileen's perception of the hope-promoting promise of open conditions was strongly linked to the newly available pathways and agentic capacity afforded by ROTL. Eileen, ⁹ who was also yet to reach her tariff expiry date and had recently arrived in open conditions, confirmed that she now allowed herself to ‘feel hopeful’ on account of the direct route to release she now felt was available to her, while simultaneously offering access to new forms of agency through ROTL.

Viewing these experiences through the lens of Snyder's model, then, being deemed suitable for open conditions and beginning to access ROTL played an important role in hope because it allowed individuals’ desires for the future to take on a less abstract form. As a consequence, investing in plans and dreams for the future (goals) began to feel not only possible and meaningful but, crucially, safe, because a physical route to release suddenly existed (pathways) and felt accessible to the individual (agency). The hope-promoting power of personally experiencing open conditions and ROTL (rather than merely anticipating them) was so strong that it even facilitated hope among individuals who were many years post-tariff. For instance, despite being 20 years beyond his tariff end (and therefore his earliest possible release date), Eugene described how arriving in an open prison allowed him to finally feel ‘hopeful’; that after serving more than three continuous decades in custody, he finally sensed he was ‘doing something right’.

Yet individuals who remained in closed and higher security prisons explained that open conditions and ROTL were not the sole prerequisite for hope formation at the late stage of a life sentence, and that a sense of forward momentum could ignite hope in these settings, even among lifers beyond their tariff expiry date. For example, Victor's recent transfer to a Category B therapeutic facility after almost two decades in the high secure estate was experienced as a long-awaited and progressive move. Similar to Eugene, this event had created the conditions for Victor to develop a newly positive vision of his future—one which had felt inaccessible, undesirable and undeserved for almost 20 years:

Before I came here, I had no hope. I saw nothing [but] negativity. […] I’ve never pursued [progression] before […] But when I came here, and saw that little hole getting bigger and bigger, and bigger [I realized], ‘There is a possibility to get out of prison.’ And as much as it's scary, it's quite enjoyable to know that I could one day maybe sit with my family. And it's like a dream I used to have becoming a reality.

(Victor, 30s, post-tariff, served 19 years)

Contrary to Mason’s (1990) assertions, then, the experiences of Eugene and Victor make clear that hope is possible for individuals who are many years, and even decades, beyond their tariff endpoint, and that their present location (whether open or closed conditions) and temporal orientation to the tariff point mattered less than a progressive trajectory towards eventual release. Further, and contrary to Snyder's model, a subjective feeling of progressive propulsion allowed hope to flourish, even where the specific pathways to release remained relatively unclear and agency appeared to be in short supply.

Yet a version of hope could also be maintained at the late stage by relinquishing control rather than seeking to regain it, an act reflecting the spiritual notion of ‘strength in surrender’ (Maybrick, 1905 cited in O’Donnell, 2014: 251). For example, Taylor was in a Category C establishment, awaiting his first pre-tariff review which (as a consequence of a recent disciplinary infraction) had been subject to a four-year ‘knock-back’ (an institutional decision to deny progression). He was frustrated by the fact that someone else was ‘holding the keys’ to his release and resented being in prison; in essence, he felt ‘stuck’. Yet, describing himself as ‘a positive guy’, Taylor explained that he stayed ‘hopeful’ through acknowledging his inability to influence the speed of his progression. Instead, he focused his energies on reconstructing this clear absence of autonomy as a ‘game’ in which he maintained control where it mattered. As he explained:

I know where I am and everything's being sorted out, i.e., the paperwork, so it's just a waiting game now—that's all it is. Waiting for that Parole Board and that's it really—there's nothing else I can do […] I’m in a safe place—it's just waiting for that time to tick over.

(Taylor, 30s, pre-tariff, closed/Category C, served 15 years)

Following O’Donnell's logic, Taylor was able to engage in a form of acceptance—‘yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life’ (Tolle, 2005 cited in O’Donnell, 2014: 252)—in a manner that was described as evidence of ‘integrity’ rather than of defeat. Here, Taylor's autonomous decision ‘not to struggle in a futile fashion against that which cannot be overcome’ (O’Donnell, 2014: 252) was an act of agency, proactively refocusing his attention from what he could not control (the speed of the process) to that which he could (his own behaviour within the ‘game’). Similarly, Shane, who was approaching his third release board and had served 25 years, talked with passion about his hopes for the future (‘steady work [….] and maybe the little white sands of a Yugoslavian beach’) while simultaneously acknowledging his acceptance that he was unlikely to be granted release at his upcoming Board. Such narratives echo James’ (2013) assertion that it is ‘much safer’ as a life-sentenced prisoner to ‘expect nothing’ and ‘never be disappointed’.

Lastly, hope could be maintained even among those individuals furthest beyond their tariff endpoint by ‘recasting’ and reinterpreting the experience of long-term imprisonment through faith-based narratives, particularly where this refocused attention on the ‘reward’ to be gained from their incarceration (O’Donnell, 2014: 249). For example, Ray explained how Paganism had helped him to stay hopeful after almost 40 years in custody by teaching him to re-frame his imprisonment not as a reason for despair but as a ‘journey […] of redemption’. In line with Rodriguez-Hanley and Snyder's (2000) ‘high hoper’ theory, this had enabled Ray to approach setbacks and blocked paths as ‘challenges’ to overcome rather than reasons for despair, and to focus on his successes inside prison rather than ‘crying over spilt milk’ at the additional years he would serve before being released.

These last two versions of hope (acceptance and recasting) move away from a strictly Snyderian paradigm, yet in doing so, tell us much about the—sometimes dramatic—shifts in narrative and perspective demanded of individuals if hope is to be maintained in the face of decades of confinement and the frustrations of the progression system. However, for others, these techniques of defending against hope's erosion were either inaccessible or had been, for many reasons, gradually worn down.

Losing hope

As noted above, while the late stage of a life sentence produced significant uncertainty, chiefly regarding the timescale of progression, a small number of those interviewed felt able to maintain hope in the face of this. In the main, this was achieved by acknowledging their inability to control the speed of the process or the length of time, sometimes deferring this to a higher power (whether a deity or ‘the process’) and focusing instead on that which they felt could be controlled; that is, ensuring that they had done everything within their power to guarantee that the Parole Board would struggle to reject their application for release.

For most, however, maintaining a sense of positivity in the face of such uncertainty and setbacks felt less possible. Instead, most individuals spoke about their chances of release with a deep sense of pessimism, grounded in the unpredictability of the system and uncertainty of release for life-sentenced prisoners. Like James (2013), these men and women found the endless cycle of hope formed and denied through the attempt to progress towards release to be ‘exhausting’. Many described that previously held hopes (about when they would progress to open conditions, when release would happen and how life would look beyond this) had been gradually eroded as they started to lose faith in the procedural legitimacy of the progression system. Jackie, for example, explained that she had now been waiting several months for the outcome of her pre-tariff sift, ¹⁰ which should have been communicated within 14 days. Although she had felt hopeful about being recommended for open conditions when the Board was held, the ‘little bit of a light’ she held for this (along with her hopes of a ‘normal family life’ with her partner and their child) had started to ‘dull more every day’. The feeling that her time (as fractions of her existence) did not matter—or did not matter to prison staff—contributed to her sense of procedural frustration and loss of hope:

They do make you wait in here, I think—they drag it on. It's like they think, ‘Oh […] she's done a long time, I’m sure another couple of months ain’t going to matter.’ But it does. Because it's the end. It does matter. But I don’t think they see it like that.

(Jackie)

Gail similarly described the destructive impact of repeated and unexplained delays in her pre-tariff review on her future hopes, leading her to feel that she had ceased progressing and was now ‘just stagnating’. Unlike her more hopeful counterparts described above, Gail was frustrated by her inability to influence the speed of the process (‘I can’t pick up a phone and chase this up’). Like Jackie, the sense that her time was not meaningful to prison staff had been detrimental to both her emotional well-being and her hopes of being transferred to open conditions on schedule:

The psychologist said to me, ‘Oh, it's only time.’ [But] it's not ‘only time’ - it's my life. [They say] ‘Well, you’ve only been waiting a few months’, and I haven’t. No, I haven’t. They miss the concept that, for me, I’ve been working towards getting out from day one.

(Gail)

These accounts highlight the impact of the temporal uncertainties associated with progression towards the goals of reaching open conditions and being recommended for release. Both women's experiences also highlight the ways in which hope during the late stage of a life sentence holds particular significance for life goals beyond release which feel time-limited. For example, Gail's relationship with her adult children had broken down several years earlier, and the rupture was one that she felt could only be resolved in person—an opportunity which in turn depended on her being recommended for open conditions. The apparent lack of urgency displayed by prison staff with respect to her pre-tariff review therefore took on an additional pain, leading Gail to feel that every unit of time spent not actively progressing was directly subtracting from time to be spent with her children. Jackie similarly experienced the apparent indifference of prison staff to the temporal implications of her move to open conditions in a way that was distinctively gendered. Here, every month that ticked by represented another fraction of reproductive time lost:

I think like, ‘I’m getting old now', so I’ll be really old by the time I get out. I know 40 isn’t ‘old’, but it is to me. […] Like obviously I wanted kids, and I think like I’m getting on a bit now, so it could be too late.

(Jackie)

Such experiences highlight the role of perceived procedural ambivalence in the loss of hope at the late stage of a life sentence. At this point, when individuals depend so heavily on the system to facilitate progression to release, the dissolution of trust in the processes, procedures and staff who ‘hold the keys’ could serve to obfuscate and confound routes to release (and the agency to discover and access them). The consequence of this was a fundamental depreciation of the hope that might otherwise motivate lifers forward. And while late-stage lifers were able to maintain hope to some degree under such conditions, albeit in a somewhat muted form, it was the arrival of unwanted forms of certainty—of unattainable goals, inaccessible pathways and absent agency (see Snyder, 2000)—that most consistently led to the almost total destruction of hope.

Hope abandoned: Pathway fatalism, the death of agency and retreat from release

The narratives of the majority of late-stage participants were saturated with the cumulative anger and ennui of a battle-weary group who had experienced years of procedural ambivalence and dashed hope in striving towards release. Most described countless setbacks on their pathway towards their goal of life at liberty, including recall ¹¹ following release, being repeatedly declined progressive moves to lower conditions and being sent back to higher security conditions from medium-security or open prisons.

Within these, the most frustrated and anger-infused accounts came from men who were many years beyond their tariff expiry date and, having finally reached open conditions, found that the finishing line was nowhere near as close as they had expected. ¹²

These men described a painful disjuncture between previously held perceptions about open conditions effectively being the ‘beginning of the end’ of their sentence and the ‘bittersweet’ and ‘tainted’ reality of a prison regime in which uncertainty, confusion and fear appear in the guise of ‘freedoms’ (Shammas, 2014: 104). Indeed, Harold's description of the hopelessness of his situation in the ‘gilded budgie cage’ of the open estate constructed this experience as a false dawn, contrasting more hopeful narratives from those higher up in the system (for example, Taylor's comment that this would signal the point at which one could ‘just start getting everything to fall in place’):

By Christ, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through, Cat D. […] It is all I can do not to just get shipped out and back to closed conditions, and I very nearly did that myself. I said ‘Look I can’t put up with this anymore. […] Fuck it. I am sick of chasing that carrot.’

But you are so close?

I’m not! I am not. And that's the torment. It is torture. […] You can’t see the bars, but I can.

(Harold, 40s, 13 years post-tariff, open conditions, served 27 years)

Participants who remained in closed conditions many years beyond their tariff expiry date were frequently at a loss to know how they could move forward (‘I just can’t for the life of me work out what I need to do to progress’), compounded by a sense that the ‘goal posts’ for progression were ever shifting (Stuart, 40s, five years post-tariff, high secure estate, served >25 years). Others felt that the pathways were being actively blocked by prison staff. For example, Marcus (50s, 23 years post-tariff, closed conditions/Cat B, served 38 years) talked with anger about reaching open conditions only to be ‘stitched up’ and sent back to closed conditions by psychologists who he felt did not want to see him released. Now in a Category B facility, having served more than 35 years on a 15-year tariff and with ‘no hopes in the system’ to support him towards release, Marcus could only foresee a series of negative outcomes and many more years in custody stretching out before him. The impact of being so far post-tariff and having reached late middle age yet still finding themselves stuck in high security prisons—and thus at a considerable physical distance from release—undermined hopes for the future because life outside was both too distant to be real (‘It just seems like a fairy tale; it's just totally make-believe’) and too painful to imagine, given its unreality. As Stuart explained:

Right now, you know, I’ve probably got more chance of winning the lottery as I have for making plans. […] Like I say, ‘I want to fall in love’—I genuinely do want to fall in love. Before I’ve just had sex with people, you know […] but I actually want a companion. […] I want it and I hope to get it, but then the realization that I might not get it is more unsettling, and it can affect you for days.

As a consequence, daydreams about the future were often abandoned because, as Richard (50s, Category C, served 36 years) explained, ‘it hurts’ to know they will never be fulfilled: ‘I’m not going to be able to afford a holiday, so why dream about it?’

Consistent with Rodriguez-Hanley and Snyder (2000), the impact of feeling that release might never be achievable led some late-stagers to respond in ways which were clearly counter-productive to their goal. Such sentiments were redolent of the ‘fuck it’ attitudes of fatalism among probationers described by Halsey et al. (2017), with some individuals professing to prefer the known entity of walled regimes than the heightened anxieties caused by being so close to release (Statham et al., 2021). For example, Harold could ‘only take so much’ of his cycle of compliance and denied progression, concluding that, at some point, he would just tell the prison to ‘stick [their] Cat D right up [their] fucking arse and send me back to wherever you think is appropriate, because I give up’.

A descent into apathy (see Rodriguez-Hanley and Snyder, 2000) seemed to occur most consistently among the oldest and longest-serving participants. Most seemed to have reached a point where the uncertainty that concerned them was no longer centred on the mechanisms for obtaining release (‘How can I get out?’) but on a deeper, existential ambivalence about ever achieving release. Yet similar to the long-serving lifers in Woodrow (2016), here the emphasis was less on ‘time left to serve’ and more on the extent to which time already served had distanced them from the outside world. As hope theory predicts, a growing certainty of negative outcomes eviscerated all positive future-thought—suddenly, the question was no longer concerned with the ‘how’ and ‘when’ of release but centred more on they ‘why’. Individuals began to ask whether there was ‘any point’ to continuing to strive for release (Stuart), and even whether release was still desirable by this point in the lifespan:

Is it going to be worth me getting out at 65? […] I keep thinking ‘What life have I got when I get out? What have I got to make a life when I get out? Who's going to employ me when I get out?’ […] Then it comes the obvious question, and you go, ‘Do I actually fucking want to get out?’ I’m still questioning it.

(Marty, 50s, 15 years post-tariff, closed conditions/Cat B, served 36 years)

For some, the growing conviction that they were ‘too old’ for life beyond release or that freedom now felt ‘pointless’ could become unbearable—for Stuart, such feelings were at the root of his recent attempted suicide. For others who had come to the realization that the goals they had pursued for so long—and to which their hope had been ‘anchored’ (Snyder, 2000: 9)—were almost certainly beyond their grasp, the response was not to give up on life but, in Woodrow's (2016) terminology, to ‘retreat from release’ on the grounds that there was ‘nothing out there except grief and shit’ (Harold). Through a similar logic, Walter (60s, >20 years post-tariff, closed conditions/Cat C, served >40 years)—the longest-serving and eldest participant in our sample—had resigned himself to dying in prison, seeing no place for a man like him in the modern world. The ‘pointlessness’ of release was something he had come to terms with—as he explained, it was merely a ‘fact of life’ for a pensioner who had not lived at liberty since the 1970s:

I’ve reached the stage where I don’t care whether they let me out or not. […] I have no future. […] I don’t feel sorry about this, or unhappy. […] I’m a realist, I face reality […] There's nothing out there for me. It's like taking a monkey out of the jungle and putting him in a big city. You’ve got to relearn to live outside. How can you do that after 40-odd years in prison?

(Walter)

Concluding comments

Responding to Vannier (2016), the above analyses contribute to current debates relating to the ‘right to hope’ among life-sentenced prisoners, which to date have been constrained by a focus on prisoners who have almost no chance of release. Grounded in a model of hope which is grounded in goals, pathways and agency (Snyder, 2000) (rather than fantasies and ‘false’ hope), our findings lead us to three broad conclusions regarding the pains of the late stage of life imprisonment.

First, hope cannot be sustained by the technical possibility of release alone and is not a simple and direct consequence of a sentence's reducibility. Instead it is deeply subjective, shaped by perceptions of agency and momentum as well as temporal, locational and procedural factors. Late-stage lifers who felt most hopeful were those who could envision their pathway to release and felt a sense of control over their journey towards this, but who also felt trust and confidence in the system. Hope was bolstered in the wake of a meaningful move that created a sense of forward momentum. While institutional processes meant that there were periods in which individuals felt no longer entirely ‘in control’, hope remained for those who were able to accept these non-agentic moments without despair. This was most likely among prisoners who were pre-tariff and had less experience of significant and repeated ‘setbacks’ or procedural ambivalence, although was occasionally found among post-tariff prisoners who had been able to accept or recast their circumstances as part of a higher plan or purpose.

Second, while such individual and situational idiosyncrasies contribute towards release hopes, these cannot survive in the absence of trust and confidence in the agents and processes of parole and release. Further, while uncertainty of outcome is a necessary pre-condition for hope, uncertainty of process among late-stage lifers (chiefly in terms of perceived institutional and procedural ambivalence) caused hope to suffer significantly. As predicted by Snyder's hope theory, hope was most diminished among late-stagers who were convinced that their route to release was not merely obscured but obliterated; that their lack of agency was absolute, or that they would never ‘beat’ the Parole Board. In turn, this resulted in a retreat from goal pursuit: that is, the quest for release itself (Vannier, 2016; Woodrow, 2016). Notably, many of these individuals had also given up on the possibility of a meaningful and worthwhile life beyond this point (or perhaps the reverse was true—that they had given up on a meaningful life outside precisely because they had lost faith in the system to release them). A hopeful position was far harder to maintain among those who had repeatedly found their release pathways and agentic capacities blocked, undermined or denied. Importantly, this suggests that hopelessness attributed to procedural legitimacy may be reversible, and that this is dependent on institutions working with late-stage lifers to ensure that their practices and processes relating to progression work to build agency, enhance control and develop clear pathways to release. This might include ensuring swift communication regarding progression decisions, which are delivered in a manner that acknowledges the human dignity of the individual.

Third, the most significant barrier to hope among late-stage lifers arose not from ambivalence but from certainty of negative outcomes. Such sentiments were most common among those individuals who had served the longest sentences and who felt certain both that release was subjectively and procedurally impossible, and even if release were granted, life beyond the prison was no longer worth living; that there was nothing out there for them ‘except grief and shit’. This final point speaks directly to concerns about the current legislative commitment to further extend custodial sentence lengths (including whole life orders) within England and Wales and the implications of this in terms of hope, dignity and human rights for life-sentenced prisoners.