The Demonized and Ungrievable Lives of Lifers and Death Row Inmates

Abstract

This paper makes a conceptual application of grievability from the disenfranchisement, stigmatization and disposal that lifers, death row inmates and their loved one's experience. First, I examine the work of Doka who recognizes “disenfranchised grief” as the significant losses that result in grief that is not “openly acknowledged, socially validated, or publicly mourned” (Doka, 1989, p. 224). This theory is applicable to avenues in which personal experiences of grief are discordant with society's grieving rules, as an individual or their loved one is going through the carceral system in Canada or the US. Lifers, death row inmates and their loved ones, reflect typologies that determine experiences of disenfranchised grief, and are arguably classified as an ungrievable typology that forces them to be demonized. Next, I will examine Butler's claims that community, recognition and reciprocal exchanges could offer a critical lens that acknowledge the grievability, shared experiences of vulnerability, and history of victimization for those within the carceral system. However, disposal, the logic of elimination and unequal conception of “human” (Butler, 2003), prevent the rehabilitation of lifers and death row inmates, and perpetuate an ungrievable prison population. Lastly, I examine Park's piece that states that the goal of "transitional justice” must be the decolonization of Indigenous peoples in Canada. This begins with the "decolonization of the mind” by reconceptualizing Indigenous lives as grievable and mobilizing grief as a political resource (Park, 2015, p. 273). Similarly, I believe that the same reconceptualization and use of grief as a political resource, is necessary to achieve transitional justice for lifers and death row inmates in the US. The paper explains how lifers, death row inmates and their loved ones, are demonized by the lack of greivability, community and recognition that they are awarded.