01462nam a22001457a 4500 533269 533269 260507b ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d Dagan, Netanel and Rennie, Ailie 60416 Imagining freedom: Lifers, liberty and the meaning of parole Social & Legal Studies 35(2), Apr, 2026: p.273-294 Bridging criminological and philosophical discourses, this article builds upon Berlin's ‘concepts of liberty’ to theorise the meaning of parole release. Through qualitatively analysing 130 Israeli lifers’ Parole Board hearings, we found that lifers focused more heavily on their loss of – and potential to regain – positive liberty than on negative liberty. Here, we detail how lifers progressed beyond reflecting upon their past and their current state of imprisonment (‘release from’), towards thinking about their present (‘realising release’) and their future (‘release to’). The findings, therefore, demonstrate the normative importance of the parole process in assisting lifers’ constructions of identity, agency, and hope.-Reproduced https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09646639251346949?_gl=1*1m3fhz4*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTU4MDM5NTgxNy 4xNzc4MTM3NjE0*_ga_60R758KFDG*czE3NzgxMzc2MTQkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzgxMzc2ODYkajUzJGwwJGg2MDIyMTY4Mg.. Parole, Lifers, Liberty, Qualitative analysis, Penal theory. 60417 Social & Legal Studies AR 0 0 ddc 0 0 408439 IIPA IIPA 2026-05-07 35(2), Apr, 2026: p.273-294 AR138781 2026-05-07 AR