Men and women’s prisons in the Portuguese press: The gender of punishment
| Date | 01 January 2019 |
| Author | Miguel Cameira,Luisa Saavedra,Eunice C Seixas,Ana M Silva |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474517736060 |
| Published date | 01 January 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Men and women’s prisons
in the Portuguese press:
The gender of
punishment
Luisa Saavedra
University of Minho, Portugal
Eunice C Seixas
University of Lisbon, Portugal
Miguel Cameira
University of Porto, Portugal
Ana M Silva
University of Minho, Portugal
Abstract
Since prison life is out of common people’s sight, the media have a particularly impor-
tant 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 differ-
ent practices of control in prison policies. Dangerous, violent, resistant and manipula-
tive male inmates call for prison policies based on risk control and managerialism,
whereas docile and reliable female inmates call for policies grounded on rehabilitation
Corresponding author:
Luisa Saavedra, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal.
Email: lsaavedra@psi.uminho.pt
Punishment & Society
2019, Vol. 21(1) 28–46
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474517736060
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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.
Keywords
control, hypermasculinity, managerialism, media, prison, rehabilitation, violence
Introduction
Mass media is, nowadays, particularly important in presenting the “spectacle” of
punishment. In the 1970s, Foucault (1977/1995) argued that the “spectacle” of
punishment would end with the birth of the modern prison, but his prediction
was not verified. Instead, this spectacle has been “institutionally reallocated and
symbolically elaborated in new cultural and social forms, particularly profuse
through reality shows and TV series” denoting the contemporary “pornography
of law and order” (Wacquant, 2015: 14). Several authors have made connections
between critical criminology and media/cultural studies suggesting that the media
construct and disseminate ideological discourses about prisons and inmates, which
reinforce the dominant political view (e.g. Jewkes, 2007).
There are few studies on the media representations of prisons, and the existent
ones have neglect the gender issue, focusing on the representation of the institution
in general (Marsh, 2009, 2013; Mason, 2006). On the other hand, previous studies
that have directly analyzed penitentiary institutions with a focus on gender, have
analyzed either women’s (Allspach, 2010; Carlen and Tombs, 2006; Carlen and
Worrall, 2004; Cunha, 2002; Hannah-Moffat, 2010; Kruttschnitt et al., 2013;
Trammell, 2009) or men’s prisons (Bandyopadhyay, 2006; Jewkes, 2005; Karp,
2010; Messerschmidt, 1993; Rymhs, 2012). Therefore, one of the main goals of
the present study was to compare the ways in which men and women prisons are
presented in the same newspaper and to check whether these accounts reproduce
the traditional norms of femininity and masculinity. Given the absence of studies
on media representations of Portuguese prisons, the present study also aims to
analyze their specificities in this country, if existent. We were concerned with two
major topics: how prisons and inmates are generally depicted and which prison
policies are favored by the media. Specifically, what kinds of functions do media
representations of prisons address themselves to or construct? Are prison policies
related with the current political and economic situation in these representations?
Which roles do prison administrations play in media representations?
We shall begin by describing the Portuguese context in what concerns the
prison institution, namely, the current facilities conditions and public policies,
and then proceed to reviewing gender studies that approach the topics of prisons
and inmates.
Saavedra et al. 29
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