Prisoners’ Rights and Media Wrongs: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Media Representation of Private Prisons in New Zealand

<p>In 2009, the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill was passed, implementing the New Zealand (NZ) Government’s policy of prison privatisation. Subsequently, ‘Mt Eden’, a public prison previously managed by the state, was contracted to British conglomerate Serco and a second private prison, ‘Wiri’, was built under contract to the same company. However, in July 2015, a cell-phone video capturing Mt Eden prisoners engaged in fights, in full view of prison officers and CCTV, was uploaded to YouTube. It captured the attention of the media, politicians and the public. An unprecedented stream of media revelations about prisoner mistreatment, corruption and various human rights violations followed, prompting the Department of Corrections to seize control of the prison. In the wake of this ‘crisis’, this thesis explores the changing nature of legitimacy for private prisons in NZ. Where previously, legitimacy of the penal system was largely staked on security and maintaining sufficiently austere prison conditions, the revelations of serious rights violations at Mt Eden prison highlights one of the ‘moments’ in which the legitimacy of the prison system was fractured for being too severe. To examine the changing nature of legitimacy, the study investigates the treatment of private prisons by three media sources - the New Zealand Herald, Stuff and Radio New Zealand. It uses framing, critical discourse and source analysis, with the aim of exploring how dominant penological discourses operate to protect and sustain the prison system in the face of a human rights scandal. The thesis separates analysis into two critical periods: after the introduction of private prisons in 2009; and after the release of the YouTube videos. A managerial frame is consistently found across the news outlets alongside a source bias towards mainstream politics and corporate interests. Before the human rights scandals, the focus on how to deliver punishment, rather than the state’s obligations to those it incarcerates or wider social goals, established the legitimacy of private prisons under the banal everyday discourses of managerialism. While humanitarian framing increased substantially after the human rights scandals, these were subsumed under the frames of managerialism, security and less eligibility. These frames acted to depict the prison crisis as an unfortunate individual aberration of security that could be managed through a government response. In short, the legitimacy of the prison remained intact and was, ultimately, strengthened.</p>

Prisoners’ Rights and Media Wrongs: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Media Representation of Private Prisons in New Zealand

<p>In 2009, the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill was passed, implementing the New Zealand (NZ) Government’s policy of prison privatisation. Subsequently, ‘Mt Eden’, a public prison previously managed by the state, was contracted to British conglomerate Serco and a second private prison, ‘Wiri’, was built under contract to the same company. However, in July 2015, a cell-phone video capturing Mt Eden prisoners engaged in fights, in full view of prison officers and CCTV, was uploaded to YouTube. It captured the attention of the media, politicians and the public. An unprecedented stream of media revelations about prisoner mistreatment, corruption and various human rights violations followed, prompting the Department of Corrections to seize control of the prison. In the wake of this ‘crisis’, this thesis explores the changing nature of legitimacy for private prisons in NZ. Where previously, legitimacy of the penal system was largely staked on security and maintaining sufficiently austere prison conditions, the revelations of serious rights violations at Mt Eden prison highlights one of the ‘moments’ in which the legitimacy of the prison system was fractured for being too severe. To examine the changing nature of legitimacy, the study investigates the treatment of private prisons by three media sources - the New Zealand Herald, Stuff and Radio New Zealand. It uses framing, critical discourse and source analysis, with the aim of exploring how dominant penological discourses operate to protect and sustain the prison system in the face of a human rights scandal. The thesis separates analysis into two critical periods: after the introduction of private prisons in 2009; and after the release of the YouTube videos. A managerial frame is consistently found across the news outlets alongside a source bias towards mainstream politics and corporate interests. Before the human rights scandals, the focus on how to deliver punishment, rather than the state’s obligations to those it incarcerates or wider social goals, established the legitimacy of private prisons under the banal everyday discourses of managerialism. While humanitarian framing increased substantially after the human rights scandals, these were subsumed under the frames of managerialism, security and less eligibility. These frames acted to depict the prison crisis as an unfortunate individual aberration of security that could be managed through a government response. In short, the legitimacy of the prison remained intact and was, ultimately, strengthened.</p>

Punishment of Persons Convicted of Economic (Business) Crimes and Malfeasance in Office, in the Assessment of the Public and Professionals

Introduction: the article considers ultra-liberal, ultra-radical and realistic views on the punishment of persons convicted of economic (business) crimes and malfeasance in office. The article analyzes public and professional opinion on this problem using the results of specific sociological studies conducted in 2018–2019 by Tkachevsky Research and Education Center “Problems of Penal Law” under Lomonosov Moscow State University. Research materials and methods: the research is based on the application of the specific sociological research method. The materials for our research include the results of the study of public and professional opinion on the punishment of those convicted of economic crimes and malfeasance in office, and on the places and conditions of their imprisonment. Empirical research includes surveys of three types of respondents: citizens of the Russian Federation; persons convicted of economic crimes and malfeasance in office who are serving sentences in correctional institutions; correctional officers. We also investigate proposals on sending the convicts under consideration to correctional institutions located in remote regions of Russia, and the prospects for the construction and opening of so-called private prisons for them. We analyze the practice of keeping persons convicted of economic crimes and malfeasance in office together with other categories of convicts. Results: we conclude that the public and professionals do not tend to hold extreme positions (ultra-liberal or ultra-radical) in the punishment of persons convicted of economic crimes and malfeasance in office. The public and professionals assess quite realistically the criminal policy of the state and judicial practice at the present stage of the state's development and allow, within certain limits, the application of punishment in the form of imprisonment to economic and official criminals. We emphasize that both categories of respondents (citizens and convicts) are more inclined to use imprisonment in relation to persons who have committed malfeasance in office than to those who committed economic crimes. We argue that public opinion is dissatisfied with the fact that persons convicted of malfeasance in office and economic crimes are kept together with other categories of convicts. There is no such dissatisfaction in the professional opinion: the majority of interviewed correctional officers do not support the idea of sending those convicted of economic crimes and malfeasance in office to separate correctional institutions. We put forward a proposal concerning the implementation of the idea that persons convicted of economic crimes and malfeasance in office should be held in separate correctional institutions in the course of modernization provided for by the Concept for development of the penal system of the Russian Federation until 2030, which consists in opening joint correctional institutions.

The 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic and Its Corresponding Data Boon: Issues With Pandemic-Related Data From Criminal Justice Organizations

Public organizations, including institutions in the U.S. criminal justice (CJ) system, have been rapidly releasing information pertaining to COVID-19. Even CJ institutions typically reticent to share information, like private prisons, have released vital COVID-19 information. The boon of available pandemic-related data, however, is not without problems. Unclear conceptualizations, stakeholders’ influence on data collection and release, and a lack of experience creating public dashboards on health data are just a few of the issues plaguing CJ institutions surrounding releasing COVID-19 data. In this article, we detail issues that institutions in each arm of the CJ system face when releasing pandemic-related data. We conclude with a set of recommendations for researchers seeking to use the abundance of publicly available data on the effects of the pandemic.

Impacts of Private Prison Contracting on Inmate Time Served and Recidivism

This paper examines the impact of private prison contracting by exploiting staggered prison capacity shocks in Mississippi. Motivated by a model based on the typical private prison contract that pays a per diem for each occupied bed, the empirical analysis shows that private prison inmates serve 90 additional days. This is alternatively estimated as 4.8 percent of the average sentence. The delayed release erodes half of the cost savings offered by private contracting and is linked to the greater likelihood of conduct violations in private prisons. The additional days served do not lead to apparent changes in inmate recidivism. (JEL H76, K42)

For-Profit Private Prisons and the Criminal Justice–Industrial Complex

Privatization refers to outsourcing government functions to a private, usually for-profit, business although the arrangement can be with a non-profit organization. Currently, the most privatized aspect of criminal justice is punishment in general and prisons in particular. Prisons have historically engaged in “nominal privatization,” which includes privatization of services such as the designing and construction of prisons, provision of food services, medical care, and commissary. During the 1980s, contracts expanded to include “operational privatization,” which meant contracting out the day-to-day management of prisons to private, for-profit companies. Operational privatization involves a private company operating a facility owned by the government or managing inmates in a prison that the company owns. In some countries, such arrangements may be called public private partnerships (PPP) or private finance initiatives (PFI). Operational privatization originated during the 1980s in the United States, which was undergoing an unprecedented prison expansion because of ongoing wars on crime and drugs. At the same time, politicians were promising tax cuts, so privatization allowed a resolution to the contradiction by allowing private capital to profit by taking on some traditional responsibilities of government. Despite objections that the privatization of punishment and prison were different in nature than, say, trash collection, the dominant political view was that government kept sentencing authority and business could do the other functions more efficiently. While operational privatization has spread to a handful of countries, the largest private prison corporations are US-based, multibillion-dollar multinational companies that are traded on stock exchanges. As such, private prisons are the tip of a much larger criminal justice (CJ)–industrial complex, which describes a range of business and financial interests whose profit motive can shape criminal justice policy, including in ways that perpetuate current injustices. The CJ-industrial complex, mirroring the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower warned of, is comprised of everyone who financially profits from the police, courts, and corrections system. In turn, it is part of a larger security-industrial complex, which includes private security, investigators, intelligence, and technology sold as a response to (real and exaggerated) fear of crime, hackers, terrorists, and youth. Even when considered on its own, though, the CJ-industrial complex is significant because it could also mirror the concerns Eisenhower had: that because of its size and lobbying power, the defense industry could start to make policy based too much on its own interest rather than for the public good.

Holding private prisons to account: what role for Controllers as ‘the eyes and ears of the state’?

The advent of the private sector’s contemporary involvement in prisons in England and Wales saw the creation of a new role – that of the Controller. Controllers are embedded within all privately managed prisons as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the State. They hold the private sector to account on a day-to-day basis, ensuring that private providers deliver on their contractual promises and that the State’s delegated penal power is wielded in accordance with the law. While Controllers occupy an essential theoretical position within the prison accountability landscape, little is known about how Controllers understand and practice their roles and what this might mean for the nature and quality of accountability achieved. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews with Controllers, this chapter explores the vision of accountability pursued by Controllers, their orientations to contract management, and the practical nature and impact of their accountability work. The chapter focuses on the form and significance of Controllers’ relationships with private prison Directors, especially exploring themes of trust and relationality.