TY - BOOK ID - 67164305 TI - Lifers : seeking redemption in prison. PY - 2009 SN - 9780415801980 9780203876220 9781135966256 9781135966294 9781135966300 9780415801683 0415801982 PB - Abingdon Routledge DB - UniCat KW - Prisoners KW - Criminals KW - Prisons KW - Attitudes KW - Conduct of life KW - Rehabilitation KW - Convicts KW - Correctional institutions KW - Imprisoned persons KW - Incarcerated persons KW - Prison inmates KW - Inmates of institutions KW - Persons KW - Inmates KW - Prisoners - United States - Attitudes KW - Prisoners - United States - Conduct of life KW - Criminals - Rehabilitation - United States KW - Prisons - United States UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:67164305 AB - John Irwin writes about prisons from an unusual academic perspective. Before receiving a Ph.D. in sociology, he served five years in a California state penitentiary for armed robbery. This is his sixth book on imprisonment – an ethnography of prisoners who have served more than twenty years in a California correctional institution. The purpose of the book is to take issue with the conventional wisdom on homicide, society’s purposes of imprisonment, and offenders’ reformability. Through the lifers’ stories, he reveals what happens to prisoners serving very long sentences in correctional facilities and what this should tell us about effective sentencing policy ER -