This is a multimedia storytelling project created in collaboration with people serving Life Without Parole (LWOP) in California’s state prisons for women. People serving LWOP describe themselves as the “lost population” of the prisoner rights movement. Their sentences are so severe, they seem impossible to reverse. Through visual storytelling, A Living Chance will humanize the LWOP population and make visible the struggles and resiliency of people who are, essentially, sentenced to die in prison.
Through video and audio recordings, interviews, letters, and photographs we document the stories of people sentenced to LWOP. These stories are compiled into this website and publications to be used for public education, broader campaign work against LWOP, as well as to support individual cases.
This project emerges from current organizing inside prison—specifically the work of incarcerated members of California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), a grassroots social justice organization with members inside and outside of prison.
By carrying the voices of this lost population beyond the prison walls, A Living Chance has the potential to affect cultural and legislative change, thus giving those sentenced to LWOP in California a living chance at freedom. video