In Search of Hope in Criminal Justice: the case of elderly life-sentenced prisoners

2013年，欧洲人权法院大分庭对温特等人诉联合王国一案作出判决，首次引入了“希望”的概念来确定无期徒刑的可接受性。法律形式的希望只有通过确保囚犯真正有可能获释才能实现。自温特以来，希望已经成为国际政治关注的话题，并推动了法学和监狱社会学的一些学术关注。然而，希望在国家和地方层面的作用仍然难以捉摸。因此，一个最紧迫的问题被忽视了：被判无期徒刑的老年囚犯最不可能在自然生活中获释的案件。简而言之，HOPE，当应用于被判处终身监禁的老年囚犯的特定案件时，质疑无期徒刑的合法性。这个项目解决了一个及时的社会挑战：全世界的无期徒刑正在急剧增加，全球监狱人口正在以前所未有的速度老龄化。英国就是这两种上升趋势的例证。英格兰和威尔士被判无期徒刑的人数比德国、俄罗斯、意大利、波兰、荷兰和斯堪的纳维亚半岛的总和还要多，被判无期徒刑的囚犯中，近三分之一是60岁及以上的男性。基于对英格兰和威尔士(第一阶段)和苏格兰(第二阶段)三个监狱地点被判终身监禁的老年男性囚犯的研究，该项目解决了以下三个研究问题：(RQ1)希望在国家法律话语中意味着什么？(RQ2)在监狱世界，被判终身监禁的老年男性在监狱系统中如何保持或重新定义希望？(RQ3)监狱工作人员如何在实践中给那些最有可能没有希望的人带来希望？该项目有两个主要目标：1)通过绘制希望作为法律、经验和监狱实践之间的关系，提供关于刑事司法中希望的意义和重要性的新知识，以此作为设计“可接受”惩罚的衡量标准；2)推动犯罪学人权议程，使抽象理论与监狱经验和实践的具体讨论相协调。这些目标将通过以下方式实现：-利用老年学、神学和哲学制定希望的概念框架，将为监狱的法律和实证研究提供信息(重点1)；-研究法律话语下的希望，包括对法律、立法辩论和法院判决进行深入的法律文件分析(重点2)；-探索被判终身监禁的老年囚犯的希望生活经历和监狱做法，旨在通过面对面访谈和监狱中的实地调查给予希望(重点3)。这项实地工作将在英格兰和威尔士的三个监狱地点进行，以最好地探索希望的经验和做法是如何在判决的不同阶段演变的。英国皇家监狱管理局(HMPS)的高级监狱管理层已确认给予全力支持。总体而言，该项目提供了一些开创性的方面：-它将挑战关于被忽视的老年无期徒刑囚犯亚群无期徒刑合法性的假设；-它将把人道主义法律概念纳入监禁社会学，并将人权的现实纳入法律研究；-它将开发一个新的概念分析框架，并为连接法律和监狱社会学制定创新的方法路线图，这将重塑和推动犯罪学中的人权研究议程；-它将对从法律话语到监狱世界的刑事司法系统中的人权轨迹进行多层次分析，评估希望在不同地方和判刑阶段的运作，并将法律问题与监狱着陆的现实联系起来。

In 2013, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered a judgment in the case of Vinter and others v the United Kingdom that introduced for the first time the notion of 'hope' to determine the acceptability of life sentences. Hope, in its legal form, can only be met by ensuring prisoners a real possibility of release. Since Vinter, hope has become a topic of international political interest and propelled some academic attention in law and prison sociology. Yet the role of hope at national and local level remains elusive. As a result, a most urgent issue has been overlooked: the case of elderly life-sentenced prisoners who are the least likely to be released during their natural life. In brief, hope, when applied to the particular case of elderly life-sentenced prisoners, questions the very legitimacy of life imprisonment.This project addresses a timely societal challenge: life sentences are dramatically increasing across the world and the global prison population is ageing at an unprecedented pace. The UK exemplifies both concerning upward trends. There are more people life sentences in England and Wales than in Germany, Russia, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands and Scandinavia combined, and nearly a third of the life-sentenced prison population are men who are aged 60 and above. Based on research on older male prisoners sentenced to life held across three prison sites in England & Wales (phase 1), then Scotland (phase 2), the project addresses the three following research questions: (RQ1) What does hope mean in national legal discourse ? (RQ2) In the prison world, how do elderly life-sentenced men maintain or re-define hope as they progress through the prison system? (RQ3) How do prison staff give hope in practice to those most likely to be without hope?This projects has two main goals: 1) to contribute new knowledge on the meaning and importance of hope in criminal justice as a metric for designing 'acceptable' punishment by charting the relationship between hope as law, as experiences, and as it is practised in prison; 2) to drive forward a criminological human rights agenda that reconciles abstract theory with concrete discussions of prison experiences and practices. These goals will be achieved through:- The development a conceptual framework for hope drawing on gerontology, theology and philosophy that will inform the legal and empirical prison research (focus 1);- The study of hope under legal discourse comprising in-depth legal documentary analysis of laws, legislative debates and court judgments (focus 2); - An exploration of elderly life-sentenced prisoners lived experiences of hope and of prison practices aimed at giving hope through face-to-face interviews and empirical fieldwork in prison (focus 3). The fieldwork will be conducted across three prison sites in England and Wales to best explore how experiences and practices of hope evolve at different stages of the sentence. Full support has been confirmed from senior prison management at Her Majesty's Prison Service (HMPS).Overall, the project offers a number of ground-breaking dimensions: - it will challenge assumptions about the legitimacy of life imprisonment with respect to the overlooked elderly life-sentenced prisoners' subgroup; - it will bring humanitarian legal concepts into the sociology of imprisonment and insert lived realities of human rights to law studies; - it will develop both a new conceptual frame of analysis and develop an innovative methodological roadmap for bridging law and prison sociology that will reshape and drive forward a human rights research agenda in criminology; - it will provide a multi-level analysis of the trajectories of human rights in the criminal justice system from legal discourse to the prison world, evaluating the workings of hope in different places and phases of the sentence, and linking legal issues to the lived realities of the prison landings.