Lesley A Sharp

Chronic, terminal illnesses and the graying of America’s prisons characterize a growing health crisis in carceral America, especially for men, who comprise 90% of the nation’s 1.9 million incarcerated. Widespread failure of compassionate medical release imposes unanticipated death sentences on men for whom dying alone and abandoned is a legitimate fear. Approximately 70 institutions house hospices staffed by trained inmate volunteers who offer compassionate care and companionship to dying inmates. Hospice on the Outside strives to facilitate a “good death”; other premises inform prison hospice: no one—regardless of crime—should die alone and abandoned; and, purportedly, empathic deathcare transforms volunteers by subverting hyper-masculinity and criminal incorrigibility. Several deficits characterize established scholarship: a focus on in-prison experience, but not on how hospice work informs subjectivity post-release; a paucity of comparative studies across institutions; sparse data on how supervisors’ professions shape the ethos of prison hospice; and limited anthropological engagement. This 18 month ethnographic project addresses these deficits. Archival research, onsite visits to 6 prisons, and interviews with 20+ formerly incarcerated men and 10+ supervisory staff will direct efforts to answer the following, core question: What are the longterm, subjectively understood consequences of deathcare for formerly incarcerated men?