Still Doing Life
22 Lifers, 25 Years Later
Side-by-side, time-lapse photos and interviews, separated by twenty-five years, of people serving life sentences in prison, by the bestselling author of The Little Book of Restorative Justice
The Meaning of Life
“Life without parole is a death sentence without an execution date.” —Aaron Fox (lifer) from Still Doing Life
In 1996, Howard Zehr, a restorative justice activist and photographer, published Doing Life, a book of photo portraits of individuals serving life sentences without the possibility of parole in Pennsylvania prisons. Twenty-five years later, Zehr revisited many of the same individuals and photographed them in the same poses. In Still Doing Life, Zehr and co-author Barb Toews present the two photos of each individual side by side, along with interviews conducted at the two different photo sessions, creating a deeply moving of people who, for the past quarter century, have been trying to live meaningful lives while facing the likelihood that they will never be free.
In the tradition of other compelling photo books including Milton Rogovin’s Triptychs and Nicholas Nixon’s The Brown Sisters, Still Doing Life offers a riveting longitudinal look at a group of people over an extended period of time—in this case with complex and problematic implications for the American criminal justice system. Each night in the United States, more than 200,000 men and women incarcerated in state and federal prisons will go to sleep facing the reality that they may die without ever returning home. There could be no more compelling book to challenge readers to think seriously about the consequences of life sentences.
Howard Zehr is a distinguished professor of Restorative Justice at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. He is the author of the bestselling The Little Book of Restorative Justice and Doing Life, among other titles.
Barb Toews is associate professor of criminal justice at University of Washington, Tacoma. She is author of The Little Book of Restorative Justice for People in Prison and co-author, with Howard Zehr, of Critical Issues in Restorative Justice. She is the editor of the Little Books in Restorative Justice series and lives in Tacoma, Washington.
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