Life Without Parole and Medically Assisted Death: The Coming Crisis in American Punishment

There is a coming crisis in the American criminal legal system involving the development of two policies in the United States – the expansive use of life-without-parole sentences (LWOP) and the expanding legalization of medical assistance in dying (MAID). While MAID remains a controversial practice, most arguments on the subject consider its use for terminally ill patients in hospital settings. But what about people in prison? In this book, criminologists James W. Marquart and Joshua S. Long trace the development of LWOP sentencing practices and their consequences alongside the global use of MAID for incarcerated populations. Examining individual cases, legal arguments, sentencing data, and mortality data alongside the first national public opinion poll gauging support in the U.S. for MAID in prisons, the book starts a critical conversation on the correctional context of MAID in US prisons.

James W. Marquart is a Professor of Practice in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the Texas Christian University. He has authored over sixty refereed articles and eight books on matters relating to crime and criminal justice. As a result of his research on capital punishment, he has testified in over thirty capital murder trials.

Joshua S. Long is an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell where he teaches classes on victimology and the corrections system. He conducts research on adverse childhood experiences and prison violence. He is the author of Avenging Child Sex Abuse: Vigilante Violence in Prisons and the Community (2024) and Prison Homicide: Killing and Dying in Prison Today (2025).