Full Description
PROSE Award Finalist for Psychology
Prisoners on death row spend 22 or more hours a day alone in cramped, barren cells. They have little to do except wait to die -- without knowing if it will happen in days or decades. This extreme isolation combined with the omnipresent fear of death takes a severe psychological toll that is unnecessary, inhumane, and -- in the eyes of many -- unconstitutional.
In this book Hans Toch, James Acker and Vincent Bonventre present wide-ranging scholarly perspectives from psychologists, legal professionals, and criminologists, along with compelling personal accounts from prison administrators and actual death row inmates. Together, they reveal the systemic, physical, and moral conditions that define and underlie death row, as well as the humanity of death row inmates who struggle to find meaning amid a lack of human contact, physical activity, and mental stimulation. This book represents an urgent call to action for researchers, policymakers, and all those who seek criminal justice reform.
Contents
Contributors
Foreword
Jamie Fellner
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Hans Toch, James R. Acker, and Vincent Martin Bonventre
Part I: Overview of Death Row Conditions
Chapter : Rethinking Classification, Programming, and Housing for Death Row Inmates
Jeanne Woodford
Chapter 2: Waiting Alone to Die
Terry A. Kupers
Chapter 3: Lessons in Living and Dying in the Shadow of the Death House: A Review of Ethnographic Research on Death Row Confinement
Robert Johnson and Gabe Whitbread
Part II: Legal and Policy Issues
Chapter 4: Death Row Solitary Confinement and Constitutional Considerations
Fred Cohen
Chapter 5: The Failure of a Security Rationale for Death Row
Mark D. Cunningham, Thomas J. Reidy, and Jonathan R. Sorensen
Chapter : Execution amp quot Volunteers amp quot : Psychological and Legal Issues
Meredith Martin Rountree
Part III: Concepts of Time on Death Row
Chapter 7: Psychological Survival in Isolation: Tussling With Time on Death Row
Ian O'Donnell
Chapter 8: Time on Death Row
Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian
Chapter 9: Spending Time on Death Row: A Case Study
Gareth Evans, Eleanor Price, Amy Ludlow, Ruth Armstrong, and Shadd Maruna, with Jonathan Reed
Part IV: Stories of Surviving Death Row and Postexoneration Trauma
Chapter : Once Numbered Among the Dead, Now I Live!
Joe D'Ambrosio with Rev. Neil Kookoothe
Chapter : amp quot Dreaming That I'm Swimming in the Beautiful Caribbean Sea amp quot : One Man's Story on Surviving Death Row
Charles S. Lanier
Chapter 2: Continuing Trauma and Aftermath for Exonerated Death Row Survivors
Saundra D. Westervelt and Kimberly J. Cook
Appendix. Rethinking Death Row: Variations in the Housing of Individuals Sentenced to Death
The Arthur Liman Public Interest Program, Yale Law School
Index
About the Editors
