Life-25: Interviews with Prisoners Serving Life Sentences

Susan Massarella is a reference librarian at Laurentian University.

When capital punishment was abolished in Canada in 1976 with the passing
of Bill C–84, sentences for first-degree murder convictions were
increased to a minimum of 25 years with the possibility of parole after
15 years. Currently, there is a call from victims’ rights groups and
some politicians to eliminate the 15-year review. The authors of this
vital work were both teaching with the now-defunct Simon Fraser
University Prison Education Program at Kent Maximum Security in Agassiz,
British Columbia, when they decided to give voice to the very people
most affected by the lengthy prison terms: the prisoners themselves.

To place the inmates’ stories in context, the authors have provided a
preface and epilogue that deal with sentencing issues. They allow the
inmates to recount their stories in their own words. Each account
follows the same basic pattern: in the first part, the inmate describes
his family background and experiences prior to incarceration; in the
second part, he discusses how he is adjusting to his sentence. (Some of
the accounts tend to ramble on, and the details of the boredom of prison
life become quite monotonous to read.) Appended to each account is an
update on the prisoner’s situation two years later.

Life–25 includes an annotated bibliography and a useful glossary of
prison terminology. The book is highly recommended for academic and
public libraries.