Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

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The primary aim of this research is to examine the extent which prison management has been influenced by New Public Management (NPM). Much has been written about the growing influence of NPM on public services like health, transport and education. In the prison field, however, the literature is relatively limited. Accordingly, with particular reference to the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), this research attempts to fill this gap in knowledge by exploring the influence of NPM on the SPS and its relation to the use of contractual management of prisons. Key concerns of this research are the development of prison policy during the last two decades, the use of “business-like” mechanisms to manage prisons and the accountability measures which the SPS has undergone as a result of NPM. The main sources of data are interviews with key actors in the recent development of the SPS and documentary analysis. Interviewees were asked during the semi-structured interviews to reflect on the key concerns referred to above. Material from the interviews was then integrated with academic literature, policy papers, annual reports, contracts and other published documents. This research concludes that NPM has affected the SPS on the dimensions of both prison policy discourse and of operations. For the former, the analysis of contemporary prison discourse demonstrates that the focus of prison policy in Scotland has extended over time from traditional concepts, for instance control, deterrence and rehabilitation, to embrace managerial ones such as effectiveness, efficiency and value for money. On the operational dimension, this research reveals that the extensive use of a “business-like” approach in the management of prisons, in particular the delegation of decision-making power from the Headquarters to prison governors; the use of contractual management to manage both private and public prisons; the use of contracting out for prisoner transportation and prisoner programme and the SPS’s focus on ‘customer service’. In summary, the influence of NPM is more far-reaching than the privatisation of public prisons as such. This is because NPM changed the way public prisons are managed by bringing in managerial mechanisms borrowed from the private sector.

Past work related to the private prison system has focused on direct comparisons between private and public facilities, including their respective quality, cost-effectiveness, and influence on recidivism. Using 2005 United States data compiled from a prison facility census, county census, and information on number of arrests by county, I examine the effect that the presence of private prisons has on the number of adult male arrests per county. Across four regression models, I initially find a significant effect of private prisons on arrests, but find that effect becomes insignificant once county and prison controls are accounted for. This suggests that the presence of a private prison in a particular county does not necessarily lead to a significant increase or decrease of arrests in that area.

Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Gerad Middendorf / The stigma of prison extends beyond the male prisoner to those who care about him, often his wife. Almost all prisoners will be released back into their communities (Hughes, 2003) and having a solid support network improves successful re-entry experiences and lowers recidivism rates for men who are released from prison (Duwe & Clark, 2013). The stigmatization that prison wives feel because they are married to an inmate, can affect how attached they feel to their community, how comfortable they feel in their workplace, and how accepted they feel by their family and friends. Financial exploitation, challenging prison policies, and visitation procedures oftentimes can make an already difficult situation even more difficult. While the number of men in prison in the United States is slowly declining, the United States remains the world leader in the number of people incarcerated (Travis, et. al., 2014). As this level of incarceration continues to affect such a large number of people (specifically women for this research) in our society, there is reason to consider a more intentional approach to focusing on recognizing the feelings and experiences of prison wives. This research includes narrative interviews of 35 women who identified as prison wives. The goal of the research was to specifically gather details on their experiences of being a prison wife and how they feel that society judged them based on the stereotype they perceived society to have. My research shows that the interviewees feel stigmatized; however, the awareness of, feelings about, and the reaction toward the stigmatization manifests differently among the two groups of prison wives that I identified: Riders and Stoppers. I have gathered details about how their experiences were often made more challenging as they tried to maintain their relationships in the midst of financial exploitation and challenging prison policies and procedures. I conclude my thesis on the relevancy of their experiences as they relate to the prison-industrial complex in our society and how this affects their interactions within the communities in which a prisoner’s wife, family members, and formerly incarcerated individuals live and work.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the US prison system was expanding at an unprecedented rate. This research charts how prisoners at the nation’s largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly referred to as Angola, founded the Angola Special Civics Project to collectively organize for prison reform. Using a combination of oral history and archival research, this thesis argues that the Angola Special Civics Project emerged during an era of political opportunity created by the coupling of political openings and contractions. Unlike outside advocates who focused their reform efforts on internal conditions, the Angola Special Civics Project centering of prisoners’ experiential knowledge led them to organize for an end to life sentencing through a combination of research, political education, electoral organizing, and coalition building. This thesis further asserts that their organizing should be conceptualized as a form of prison abolitionist reforms.

Situado no contexto de incremento das políticas penitenciárias de interiorização de unidades prisionais por todo o estado de São Paulo, este trabalho tem a intenção de analisar o cotidiano e as práticas sociais e profissionais de agentes penitenciários do município de Itirapina, cidade localizada no interior paulista, onde se encontram instaladas duas penitenciárias. Análise parte da ótica de agentes, moradores, comerciantes e demais moradores,para resgatar o modo pelo qual tais políticas de interiorização dos presídios têm afetado a vida no município em questão. Assim como os detentos, os agentes penitenciários têm seu cotidiano ligado à rotina da prisão, criam seu vocabulário e seu modo de agir transitando entre o interior da cadeia e o convívio com demais pessoas na cidade. A dinâmica social recebe grande influência dos valores e das práticas oriundos das penitenciárias construídas na cidade. Portanto, dentro deste contexto, a construção de discursos e valores colocam a profissão de agente penitenciário numa posição de destaque, cercada de privilégios, relativizando o conceito de prestígio, mesmo estando diretamente relacionado com um universo tão estigmatizado como o prisional. Através da observação da rotina desses profissionais e demais pessoas que se relacionam entre si, na intenção de perceber a dinâmica social cotidiana dessas pessoas, este trabalho também realizou entrevistas com agentes, moradores e comerciantes, buscando perceber como o ambiente criado dentro dos limites da prisão ultrapassa suas muralhas até invadir e influenciar a rotina da grande maioria da população local.. Dessa maneira, destaca-se a relevância do agente penitenciário nos mais variados espaços de sociabilidade do município, fazendo deles agentes sociais referenciais no contexto urbano. Esta dissertação volta sua análise para as transformações e consequências engendradas durante esse processo, percebendo o trânsito de agentes penitenciários, sua comunicação do convívio intramuros com o extramuros, ao mesmo tempo em que ambos se coalescem em sua dinâmica social. Percebe-se, portanto, como a cidade e a prisão interligam-se uma à outra, envolvendo todas as pessoas pertencentes a esse contexto. / Situated in the context of increase policies internalization of prisons throughout the state of Sao Paulo, this paper aims to analyze the everyday practices of social and professional prison officers of Itirapina the municipality, a town in the interior, where are installed two prisons. Analysis through the views of agents, residents, merchants and other inhabitants of the city such as internalization of prison policies has affected the county in question. Like the inmates, prison officers have linked to their daily routine of prison, they create their vocabulary and their mode of action moving between the inside of jail and living with others in the city. The social dynamics developed in Itirapina receives great influence of the values and practices from the prisons built in the city. Therefore, within this context, the construction of discourses and values put the profession of the prison guard in Itirapina in a prominent position, surrounded by privileges, relativizing the concept of prestige, it is directly related to a universe so stigmatized prison. By observing the routine of these professionals and others who relate to each other, hoping to understand the social dynamics of these people daily, this study also conducted interviews with staff, residents and merchants, seeking to understand how the environment created within the confines of the prison beyond its walls to break the routine and influence of the great majority of the population of the city. Thus, we highlight the relevance of the prison guard in a variety of social spaces in the city, making them agents of social references in the urban context. This essay turns its analysis to the changes and consequences engendered during this process, realizing the transit of prison guards, their communication with the extramural with intramural living, while they both coalesce in its social dynamics. It is clear, therefore, how city and prison are interconnected to each other, involving all those present here.

This dissertation will focus on prison work programs and prisoner rehabilitation. In particular, a program evaluation of the federal inmate labor program, the Prison Industry Enhancement Certificate Program (PIE), will be conducted in order to investigate how this program affects recidivism and labor market outcomes of offenders. This dissertation will contribute to the literature in two ways. First, it develops a simple theoretical model that incorporates prison labor into its framework in order to analyze how prison labor affects crime participation. The model suggests that the criminal’s problem is recursive. Therefore, the criminal will first decide how much time to allocate to legal activities, and then choose the optimal time allotment to illegal endeavors. The model shows that it is theoretically possible that participation in PIE could increase recidivism through wages if an increase in the wage rate causes the consumption of illegal activity to increase by more than the consumption of legal endeavors. The decision to commit a crime will be a function of the expected unemployment rate, the subjective probability of detection and conviction, legal labor market activity, the penalty for illegal activity, gains from illegal activity, nonwage income or wealth, the subjective probability of legal work while in prison, severity of punishment, and tastes. Second, it will empirically investigate how prison labor programs that approximate real world employment opportunities affect the decision to commit a crime upon release from prison, as well as post-release employment outcomes of the offender. In particular, using a unique dataset collected on participants in the PIE program across various states, this dissertation investigates how the PIE program affects recidivism and labor market outcomes compared to those who do not participate in the program. While, Smith, Bechtel, Patrick, Smith, and Wilson-Gentry (2006) is the only other research to use these data to analyze the effects of this program on recidivism and labor market outcomes, their analysis does not fully utilize control variables. The results of this study indicate that the PIE program significantly increases the time from release to arrest, significantly increases employment duration, and significantly increases earnings of the ex-offender.

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Situated amidst farmland 18 kilometres from the centre of Christchurch is Paparua men’s prison, one of New Zealand’s oldest and largest penal institutions. Prisoners have been housed at the Paparua site since 1915 and when the prison buildings were completed in 1925, around 120 prisoners were incarcerated there. Still at the same location where the two original wings continue to accommodate inmates, Paparua has the capacity for nearly 1,000 low to high-security male prisoners. Despite being almost a century old, very little has been recorded about Paparua, which is symptomatic of the paucity of published material on New Zealand prisons. This thesis seeks to address this shortfall in the literature by, for the first time, documenting the events which have taken place at Paparua and giving insight into life for prisoners there over the last 100 years. These events and the changes to prison life have been driven by the social conditions of the day and their intersection with a complex range of factors at the inmate, community and administrative levels. Paparua’s evolution, therefore, has been the product of the changing socio-political climate and by contextualising the prison’s history I will show how these dynamics have contributed to the development of Paparua. The research undertaken to achieve such a task involved an historical analysis of 130 years of departmental reports, government reports, parliamentary debates and newspaper articles. This was accompanied by 13 comprehensive interviews with former and current staff and inmates of Paparua. The reconstruction of Paparua’s past is valuable not only in that it captures the details of an interesting feature of New Zealand history but because it offers insight into the complex range of forces that a are likely to influence its development in the future.