Ardent Hope for Freedom: Escape Ideation, Learning, and Resilience in Long-Term Imprisonment

This study describes the importance of safeguarding hope for freedom throughout long-term periods of incarceration. Collaborative ethnography, an analysis of autobiographical narratives, and focus groups were utilized sequentially to examine identity change among men serving life or multi-decade prison terms. For these men, hope is not a passive concept, but an actively constructed method of withstanding harms of long-term imprisonment. Findings suggest that tenaciously maintained hope supports resilience to nihilistic self-perceptions and internal narratives. Hope was initially channeled through escape ideation —thoughts, planning, and fantasies of escape—then later through prison-based learning and education, culminating in pro-social identity reformation.