Suffering, retribution, and moral accountability in the contemporary life sentence

Abstract

This chapter examines how life imprisonment fails to achieve its retributive purposes, using data from qualitative interviews with 194 life-sentenced prisoners in England and Wales. We demonstrate a fundamental contradiction: whilst life sentences effectively inflict suffering, this suffering obstructs the moral reflection that retributive theorists assume punishment facilitates.

We develop three interconnected arguments. First, while the acute anguish of early imprisonment produces a form of suffering that impedes the capacity for moral reflection, the ways that life-sentenced prisoners adjust to this suffering suppresses the moral emotions that promote accountability or leaves them in a relatively unformed state. Second, risk discourse creates an ‘actuarial morality system’ that transforms ethical questions into technical problems, privileging future harm prevention over engagement with past wrongdoing. Third, genuine moral reflection typically occurs through non-institutional channels—personal bereavement, faith practices, informal relationships—rather than formal programmes.

Our findings question some of the assumptions made by communicative accounts of retribution. We offer empirical support for Zaibert's (2018) critique of retributivist 'simple-mindedness', suggesting that legitimate punishment requires acknowledgement of irreducible moral conflicts. The contemporary life sentence, by necessitating emotional suppression and reducing ethical considerations to questions of risk management, mirrors the 'impoverished' theories of value Zaibert identifies in some philosophical justifications of punishment. Rather than facilitating dialogical moral communication (Duff, 2001) or symbolic vindication (Hampton, 1991), these sentences obstruct meaningful moral engagement. We conclude that life imprisonment functions less as legitimate punishment than as institutionalised vengeance, failing even on retributivist grounds.

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ORCID for Ben Jarman: orcid.org/0000-0003-3527-5437

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