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Abstract
This research conducts a conceptual and qualitative investigation into the practices,
rationales and functions of imprisonment in NSW. A specific system of imprisonment,
in this case the prisons operated by the NSW Department of Corrective services, is
explored in order to examine the practices, processes and justifications for incarceration. The various
purposes, theories, rhetorics, practices and contradictions of the prison system in NSW and the ways in which
the people who are responsible for the administration of this system make sense of its operations and its
incoherencies, are central to this analysis.
This research utilises a hybrid methodology involving aspects of content analysis and grounded theory. At the
centre of this research are eight interviews with senior NSW Corrective Services staff. This analysis is
supplemented by interview with ex-prisoners, and other people familiar with, but not working for Corrective
Services. In addition a documentary analysis of both Corrective Services documents, and external literature
examining NSW prison is carried out.
The findings of these analyses are then explored with reference to both their internal coherency, as well as
their relationship to a range of theoretical frameworks. The thesis connects abstract and philosophical
questions of punishment and penalty with the logistics of running the prison system in NSW. This research
found a diversity of practices, understandings and justifications of imprisonment which connected to
particular cultural, social philosophical and structural trends. These included victimary discourses, the
rhetoric of progress, the influence of managerialism, the faith in ‘objective’ professionals, the increasing
emphasis on empiricism, the conflicts between coercive practices and individual responsibility, the
construction of prisoners as dangerous, and an ongoing struggle for purpose. Imprisonment in NSW was
found to be characterised by discrepancies between the intentions of its administrators and pragmatics of its
practice, conflicts between internal explanations of its purpose, as well as contradictions between internal
Corrective Services accounts and external expectations about the roles, functions and practices of
imprisonment. Theoretical perspectives explaining why these characterise imprisonment in NSW were
developed. These perspective include the ‘ought/is’ confusion of penal administrators, the inhumanity of
humane containment, the myth of technocratic amorality, and the sedimentation of purpose.