Let’s All Be Easy

Abstract

The growth in life-sentenced prisoners in the United States deserves critical reconsideration. Chapter Four suggests at least three areas where policy change should occur. One is to increase the number of opportunities for personal development that lifers can undertake in prison, the better to foster their human flourishing and their efforts to assist others. A second is to make their lives more comfortable, particularly as they develop physical and cognitive maladies. A third – and most significant – is to change sentencing policy to enable easy keepers to be released. Their maturation and altruistic orientation leave them posing no public safety risk. A moral and fiscally-responsible punishment policy would make it harder to keep these prisoners so easily.