This article examines how we might best examine the most extreme and inaccessible corners of imprisonment. Drawing on a study of life imprisonment without parole (LWOP) in California, this article argues that prisoners’ letters can shed exceptional light on the hidden and unspoken experiences of imprisonment. It provides an in-depth methodological and reflective outline of how to use prisoners’ letters, a familiar tactic in prison researchers’ and advocates’ toolkits, but a research implement that is rarely discussed explicitly. By better understanding how to do prison research with letters and the emotions these might provoke in the process, this article demonstrates the very specific and distinct value of the method, in particular how letters can contribute to knowledge about extreme penal severity.

In this article, we explore the human rights implications of immigration detention in Britain and France by focusing on duration. In so doing, we show how practices in both systems fail to meet basic human rights protections, raising urgent questions about the legitimacy and justification of these sites of confinement. Whereas in the uk problems arise from the absence of a statutory upper time limit to detention, in France it is the brevity for which foreign nationals may be held that raises humanitarian concerns. In the uk, the uncertain duration of detention makes it difficult for detainees to obtain or retain legal advice. Those who are held for long periods of time struggle to maintain their right to family life, while most find the lack of clarity about the period of their confinement hard to endure. In France, where most detainees are released or deported within a matter of days, it is often difficult to access due process and legal protections in time. This brief period of confinement before expulsion contrasts with its enduring effect on their family ties and future. Drawing on policy documents, law, and the limited body of empirical material available on these carceral sites, we map the similarities and differences between them in order to identify the limits as well as some prospects of human rights in immigration detention.

This article draws on the written accounts of a self‐selected group of 48 women serving life without parole (LWOP) in California. In their testimonies, death takes on a symbolic form illustrated by the passing of time and the ‘mortification’ of the self (Goffman 1959, 1961). Their letters emphasise an embodied construction of death, provoked by ageing, illnesses, and medical neglect, as well as through the removal of motherhood and mothering. Through exploring the different, and nuanced, meanings ascribed to death by women serving LWOP, the article combats the cultural invisibility of this punishment and those who endure it.

In this article, we explore the use of immigration detention for asylum seekers in Britain and France who are awaiting removal to other European Union (EU) member states for processing under the terms of the Dublin Convention. As we will show, the emphasis on risk assessment as the grounds for detaining these people recasts humanitarian protections as security matters, effectively folding asylum seekers into a broader criminalisation of migration. A punitive response to those seeking refuge, this practice blurs the line between detention and asylum, and thereby hollows out key international human rights protections that have been central to the European project.