Men and women’s prisons in the Portuguese press: the gender of punishment

"Article first published online: October 26, 2017"
Since prison life is out of common people’s sight, the media have a particularly important
role in legitimating or, conversely, de-legitimating public discourses and policies
about punishment, incarceration and rehabilitation. In the present study, our analysis
was grounded in 83 news, 55 of these about men prisons, 24 about women prisons and
4 news about public policies in general, although having specificities about men’s and
women’s prisons published in a Portuguese national newspaper between 2005 and
2014. The analysis suggests that, with very few exceptions, gender is an important
issue in the media construction for men’s and women’s prisons and male and female
inmates; gender norms of masculinity and femininity are essentialized, justifying different
practices of control in prison policies. Dangerous, violent, resistant and manipulative
male inmates call for prison policies based on risk control and managerialism,
whereas docile and reliable female inmates call for policies grounded on rehabilitation but also security. Apart from this representation, our analysis also shows that the news,
in general, tends to align with a reformist approach, failing to interrogate the wider role
of imprisonment in social control or to discuss its alternatives.
This study was conducted at Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, and supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653).
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion