Narrating a second chance: Seeking reprieve from a life sentence

In Iowa, individuals sentenced to life without parole are faced with the realization that they will die behind bars. The only way out is by applying to the Governor and Iowa Board of Parole for sentence commutation. The outcome is rarely successful for the applicant. My study looks at a selection of 40 applications from 1999 to 2013. Using the grounded theory method, I conduct a document analysis of each application. I discover that individuals temporally construct narratives of former self, current self and future self. Three types of narratives emerge: One that describes a transformed self, one that describes a self that has been victimized and one that describes an immutable self. These findings suggest that the narratives are carefully crafted for their audience in order to convey a sense of moral decency and desistance from future trouble. The individual demonstrates the potential to shed the always bad institutional self, but in all but a very few instances is stuck with the stigmatized self. Introduction Being sentenced to life without parole for first degree murder or kidnapping is the most serious penalty in the United States criminal justice system today, with the exception