Understanding prison reform – a study of entangled practices in Sierra Leone, Kosovo and the Philippines
Research project
Contact: Andrew Jefferson
The prevention of torture, inhumane treatment and human rights
abuses in prisons remains a topic of urgent and global
significance. Global events have made places like Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo household names and today the prison occupies a central
place in popular consciousness. Yet, prisons and prison reform
processes have received surprisingly little scientific attention.
Prisons beyond the west - especially in the global south - are
understudied and ill understood, despite significant progress
within the last few years to establish non-western prisons as a
focus for serious scholarly work. Practices of reform have received
even less attention.
The project will illuminate reform processes through analysis of
the interplay between penal practices and reform practices. Focus
will be on the dynamics, rationales and everyday practices of
prisons and reform agencies but most importantly on the way the two
come together. This meeting will be conceptualized as an
encounter and focus will be on key characteristics and assumptions
as well as unforeseen consequences. We know that reform efforts
have different effects in different settings. This project asks why
and how reform projects in different settings have particular
effects.