Narratives of Adjustment and Adaptation of Older Males with Life Sentences

Abstract

The United States holds over 40% of the world’s population of men serving life in prison. There are far more men serving life today than the total prison population just decades ago. Scholarly debate research on the adaptation and adjustment of LWOPs is sparse, and very little literature was available from the inmates’ perspective. Most scholarly literature addressed stakeholders’ views on how the prison environment influenced adaptation. This research was designed to answer the LWOPs' perspective on adaptation and adjustment while imprisoned and how they described their present and ongoing adaptation and adjustment experiences. A narrative approach was used to develop a semi-structured interview instrument to collect data from 10 participants for this qualitative research. Each participant was assigned an alpha-numeric identified to protect the identity. The interview transcripts' narrative, thematic analysis were hand-coded to determine the eight categories/themes. I found the meaning of the themes was sufficient because the small size was conducive to rich, in-depth exploration that would have been impossible with larger groups. The findings indicated common themes in men's accounts, demonstrating from their perspective positive adaptation, adjustment, finding new meaning in life, and most importantly, the hope for release and the ability to achieve a second chance. This study provided insight into the positive psychological and social effects of the adaptive processes and supplemented past studies with qualitative data on experiences. Results may contribute to positive social change by providing prison administrators with a better understanding of LWOPs’ perspectives.