Being Easy Isn’t Easy

Abstract

Easy keepers arrive at that status through a maturation process that leads them to foster constructive relations with others. They do so despite a prison environment that poses considerable challenges for efforts at personal growth. This chapter reviews some of those challenges. More specifically, it emphasizes: the often fraught relations that lifers possess with prison staff, with members of their family, and with each other; the dearth of opportunities for work and education; and the difficulty they face in atoning directly for their crimes. These impediments to individual betterment make all the more remarkable the ability of lifers to become such stable and productive community members.