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Disaggregating LWOP: Life Without Parole, Capital Punishment, and Mass Incarceration in Florida, 1972–1995

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Christopher Seeds
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Abstract

Over the past 40 years, life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP) has been transformed from a rare sanction and marginal practice of last resort into a routine punishment in the United States. Two general theses—one depicting LWOP as a direct outgrowth of death penalty abolition; another collapsing LWOP into the tough-on-crime sentencing policy of the mass incarceration era—serve as working explanations for this phenomenon. In the absence of in-depth studies, however, there has been little evidence for carefully evaluating these narratives. This article provides a state-level historical analytic account of LWOP's rise by looking to Florida—the state that uses LWOP more than any other—to explicate LWOP's specific processes and forms. Recounting LWOP's history in a series of critical junctures, the article identifies a different stimulus, showing how LWOP precipitated as Florida translated major structural upheavals that broke open traditional ways of doing and thinking about punishment. In doing so, the article reveals LWOP to be a multilayered product of incremental change, of many, sometimes disjointed and indirectly conversant, pieces. Presenting LWOP as the product of a variety of penal logics, including those prioritizing fairness and efficiency, the article more generally illustrates how very severe punishments can arise from reforms without primarily punitive purposes and in ways that were not necessarily planned.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 172 - 205
Copyright
© 2018 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

I am grateful to David Garland, Lynne Haney, Steven Lukes, and Ann Morning for critical input and guidance; to Claire Simonich and the staff at the Florida State Library and Archive for research assistance; and to the editors, anonymous reviewers, and many colleagues and friends whose valuable comments and criticisms helped improve this article. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant SES 1534640 for doctoral dissertation research and assisted by a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the American Council of Leaned Societies.

References

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