dc.contributor.advisor |
McIntosh, Tracey |
|
dc.contributor.advisor |
Webb, Robert |
|
dc.contributor.author |
Gordon, Grace |
|
dc.date.accessioned |
2023-03-15T00:35:57Z |
|
dc.date.available |
2023-03-15T00:35:57Z |
|
dc.date.issued |
2022 |
en |
dc.identifier.uri |
https://hdl.handle.net/2292/63354 |
|
dc.description.abstract |
In recent years, both Labour and National governments in Aotearoa New
Zealand have recognised prison as a moral and fiscal failure. Nevertheless,
both parties still invest in policies that promote the use of incarceration.
Public safety remains a strong rationale for both the continued use of prisons
and the demand for even greater use of carceral responses. Ultimately, risk
logics, safety logics, and carceral logics intersect to dominate our responses
to harm. Through these logics, the priority continues to be exclusionary and
punitive approaches to harm, which restrict the ability to develop sustainable
and collective safety. Prison abolitionist scholarship highlights the destructive
consequences of prison and promotes the rebuilding of life-giving institutions,
thus rendering the prison and the carceral state obsolete.
This thesis examines contemporary conceptualisations of risk and safety in
Aotearoa New Zealand, focusing on understanding how they may contribute
to responses to harm. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 16 people
who work or advocate in the criminal justice sector, conceptualisations of risk
and safety and criminal justice responses to harm are critically examined
using reflexive thematic analysis. Participants in this project had a broad
range of experiences and semi-public positions; Parole Board members, expolice officers, victims’ advocates, justice advocates, a judge, a politician, a
member of local government, the Secretary of Justice, and the Department of
Corrections National Commissioner.
The analysis of the findings shows that the justice system functions as a site
of both power and pain. While Aotearoa New Zealand’s justice system may
benefit some people, it primarily operates as a wheel of failure that continually
perpetrates harm. This thesis also suggests that contemporary
conceptualisations of risk and safety can promote exclusionary and Othering
approaches that operate for or against specific communities. These
conceptualisations promote punitive and carceral responses to harm, which
in turn (re)produce more harm and pain in society. Reconceptualisations of
risk and safety are offered through the notions of ‘humanising risk’ and ‘safety
from presence’.
This thesis contributes to current conversations about the need for
transformative change in responses to harm in Aotearoa New Zealand. The
findings from this thesis provide an important platform for continued
interrogation of how contemporary conceptualisations of risk and safety can
be reimagined to envision an abolitionist reality. |
|
dc.publisher |
ResearchSpace@Auckland |
en |
dc.relation.ispartof |
PhD Thesis - University of Auckland |
en |
dc.relation.isreferencedby |
UoA |
en |
dc.rights |
Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. |
|
dc.rights.uri |
https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm |
en |
dc.rights.uri |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/nz/ |
|
dc.title |
Unleashing the carceral imagination: Moving beyond conceptualisations of risk and safety to imagine an Aotearoa without prisons. |
|
dc.type |
Thesis |
en |
thesis.degree.discipline |
Criminology |
|
thesis.degree.grantor |
The University of Auckland |
en |
thesis.degree.level |
Doctoral |
en |
thesis.degree.name |
PhD |
en |
dc.date.updated |
2023-01-09T21:27:53Z |
|
dc.rights.holder |
Copyright: The author |
en |
dc.rights.accessrights |
http://purl.org/eprint/accessRights/OpenAccess |
en |