In May, policy adviser Sarah Anderson joined a select group, becoming one of 12 people to have a Doctor of Philosophy (Criminology) awarded by a New Zealand university.
Congratulating Sarah for this landmark achievement, General Manager Policy Development Jane von Dadelszen said Corrections is fortunate to have her expertise.
Sarah’s thesis explores how early literary texts shaped public opinion about acceptable punishment and prison regimes and it analyses the role they played in representing developments in the English penal system from the mideighteenth to the early twentieth century.
“This is a historical thesis which looks at the way popular cultural representations influence policy making and decision processes,” Sarah says.
Sarah, who has been with Corrections for eight months, completed her thesis under the supervision of Victoria University’s Criminology Professor John Pratt.
“I was trying to show that prison is not just a building but has an existence in the public’s imagination. Even if people have not had a direct experience with prison they often do still have an idea of what they think it should be like. These ideas come from popular representation. In the period I examined authors such as Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde formulated powerful images of what prison was like,” she says.
“Charles Dickens drew the public’s attention to the unsanitary and punitive conditions in his writings. I was able to show how as a result of this, prison officials put in place regulations relating to adequate levels of food, disciplinary measures and living conditions.”
In the modern day, popular representations of the prison continue to influence and reflect public understandings of prison. Beliefs about prison can be formed through television programmes such as Bad Girls and Prison Break.
In turn, our views about punishment can influence decision-makers and result in initiatives such as the Law and Order Referendum in the 1999 General Election.
Almost 92 percent of voters voted for longer prison sentences for violent offenders. Since then the Parole Act 2002 and the Sentencing Act 2002 have been implemented.
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ISSN 1178-8453