Routledge Condemned to Die: Life Under Sentence of Death

Condemned to Die is a book about life under sentence of death in American prisons. The great majority of condemned prisoners are confined on death rows before they are executed. Death rows typically feature solitary confinement, a harsh regimen that is closely examined in this book. Death rows that feature solitary confinement are most common in states that execute prisoners with regularity, which is to say, where there is a realistic threat that condemned prisoners will be put to death. Less restrictive confinement conditions for condemned prisoners can be found in states where executions are rare. Confinement conditions matter, especially to prisoners, but a central contention of this book is that no regimen of confinement under sentence of death offers its inmates a round of activity that might in any way prepare them for the ordeal they must face in the execution chamber, when they are put to death. In a basic and profound sense, all condemned prisoners are warehoused for death in the shadow of the executioner. Human warehousing, seen most clearly on solitary confinement death rows, violates every tenet of just punishment; no legal or philosophical justification for capital punishment demands or even permits warehousing of prisoners under sentence of death. The punishment is death. There is neither a mandate nor a justification for harsh and dehumanizing confinement before the prisoner is put to death. Yet warehousing for death, of an empty and sometimes brutal nature, is the universal fate of condemned prisoners. The enormous suffering and injustice caused by this human warehousing, rendered in the words of the prisoners themselves, is the subject of this book. Review "Johnson’s study is widely acknowledged to be the closest anyone can come to an inside view of capital punishment, and the report of his study exemplifies the best any of us could hope to achieve in trying to convey the depth and import of significant human experiences, and in both capacities this book has been, and remains, a classic."―Hans Toch, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, State University of New York, Author of Living in Prison: The Ecology of Survival "If more people in our society understood the true nature of the death-sentencing process in our society―how it actually operates and what it necessarily entails―and came to terms with, as Camus said, what the death penalty "really is," as opposed to the "padded words," myth, and misinformation with which it is typically depicted, then the practice would have ended a long time ago. Robert Johnson’s extraordinary book brings us much closer to that enlightened understanding."―Craig Haney, Distinguished Professor of Psychology,University of California Presidential Chair, 2015-2018, Author of Death by Design: Capital Punishment as a Social Psychological System "Perhaps the most cruel and unusual aspect about capital punishment in the United States is what Robert Johnson, in this second edition of his classic, Condemned to Die, characterizes as the ‘living death" of life under sentence of death. This book is an essential resource for anyone seeking a full understanding of the death penalty in America today."―Robert Bohm, Emeritus Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Central Florida, Author of DeathQuest: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Capital Punishment in the United States "Prisoners, especially those on Death Row, are subject to a huge amount of abuse. Their abusers require two things be in place to get away with torture: The prisoners they abuse must be viewed by the larger society as less than human, as animals even; and the abuse must be secret, invisible to the general public. Robert Johnson exposes and undermines both prerequisites for abuse by letting prisoners on Death Row tell their stories, very human stories filled with multiple traumas; and by unblinkingly presenting the harsh reality of life on "The Row