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

"Shows the remarkable resilience of people sentenced to die in prison and raises profound questions about a system of punishment that has no means of recognizing the potential of people to change." --Marc Mauer, senior adviser, The Sentencing Project, and co-author (with Ashley Nellis) of 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 criminal justice activist and photographer, published Doing Life, a book of photo portraits of individuals serving life sentences without the possibility of parole at a prison in Pennsylvania. 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 disturbing tableaux of people who literally have not moved for the past quarter century.

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 devastating 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.

Author: Howard Zehr, Barb Toews
Publisher: New Press
Published: 03/15/2022
Pages: 176
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.55lbs
Size: 7.80h x 9.30w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781620976487

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 01/01/2022 pg. 76

About the Author

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.