"You Can't Really Grieve Them": Disenfranchised Grief Among People Serving Long Prison Sentences Starting in Childhood

Background and Purpose

Incarceration often obstructs those both inside and outside carceral settings from engaging in shared experiences that support psychosocial well-being. Such experiences, particularly related to death, are likely compounded for those serving long sentences. Disenfranchised grief describes one’s exclusion from openly mourning a loss due to societal boundaries of “acceptable” deaths and may prompt varying degrees of complicated grief. People who are incarcerated may not be able to speak vulnerably about their loss experience. Additionally, the terms of their sentence may prevent participation in instrumental death rituals, such as funerals, that promote healthy bereavement. Although research has considered grief in carceral contexts, there is virtually no literature specifically on the experiences of people incarcerated with life and long sentences where disenfranchisement is amplified. Guided by the dual-process model of coping with bereavement, this study explored the grief experiences of people released after being sentenced to life or long prison sentences when they were children, with a focus on rituals during and following their incarceration.

Methods

As part of a cross-sectional study, one-time semi-structured interviews were conducted with people home after being resentenced from life or long sentences starting in childhood (N = 46). In alignment with a phenomenological approach privileging meaning-making, questions were open-ended, and respondents shared what they found most important. Lasting an average of 90 minutes, interviews were conducted via Zoom and transcribed verbatim. Using NVivo, we conducted a thematic analysis, combining open, selected, and axial coding.

Results

Incarceration creates unique, unavoidable barriers to processing grief. Three key themes emerged from the data, the first of which was that prison is not a safe place to grieve. Respondents noted that it was challenging to find a safe environment within carceral settings where they could be vulnerable and grieve. Thus, some found it safer to defer grief work until after their release, described as compartmentalizing, burying, or suppressing their grief while incarcerated. Since this population largely expected to die in prison, many denied—rather than deferred—their grief outright. The second theme was that funerals are a crucial ritual in enfranchising grief. Attending funerals was not usually a possibility, especially for those who could not afford the cost of transportation and supervision. When permitted to attend a funeral, some individuals were required to wear a prison jumpsuit and shackles, creating another layer of shame, isolation, and disenfranchisement. The last theme was that deferred grief was unavoidable following release from prison. Respondents described feeling overwhelmed, spontaneously bursting into tears, and wanting to pay their respect to the dead as free people.

Implications and Conclusions

The thousands of people who have spent decades in prison starting in childhood and the 900 who have come home from those sentences have experienced immense loss and disenfranchised grief. Social workers working within carceral systems should endeavor to coordinate opportunities to attend funeral services in humane, caring ways. Social workers working post-release should assess the need to address unresolved or complex grief and provide or connect people with grief-specific services.