The objective of the present study is to gain an understanding of the learning processes of life sentenced prisoners. The research explored how life sentenced prisoners learn to live with a re-defined identity (by self and others), what they learned during their imprisonment and the impact of this learning on their ability to re-integrate into the community. It looked at how living under extreme conditions such as life imprisonment has the potential for transformative learning for the individual and can open up new understandings of what it means to be human. This study takes a constructivist grounded theory approach to discover the narratives of learning of eight participants who have been convicted of murder and sentenced to a mandatory life sentence. The law makes a very strong statement when someone is convicted of murder; it states that the person knowingly and intentionally took the life of another individual. a murder conviction carries a unique stigma which highlights the gravity of the offence and arguably acts as a deterrent (Law Reform Commission, 2008, p6) The stigma of a murder conviction is a deliberate one and is enshrined in the law. The current research study explored the impact of that deliberate stigma on the identity of the eight participants. It applied a learning lens to their stories of life before, life during and life after their life sentence. The learning focus that was grounded in the narratives of the participants resulted in the study looking at the interconnectedness between Jarvis’ theory of adult learning and ‘becoming’, Ricoeur’s concept of identity and Maruna’s definition of a redemption script and how these concepts applied to the learning stories of life sentence prisoners.