Reproducing a ‘Horrific’ Place: Carceral Humanism and Prison Expansion in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

Analysis of incarceration in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) has largely focused on the influence of penal populism. The role of progressive politics in NZ's significant carceral build-up has, by contrast, mostly escaped critical examination. Using Waikeria Prison as a case study, set to become the country's largest by 2030, this article investigates how successive NZ governments are ‘selling’ prison expansion to the public. Using critical discourse analysis, we show how this prison expansion project has been revised and sustained over the past decade in part due to Labour politicians’ abilities to reposition prison expansion as a means to deliver not simply retribution and incapacitation, but also mental health services and ‘indigenised’ corrections. Attending to NZ's distinct brand of carceral humanism, we show how various ideological defences of imprisonment can be combined, recycled and reinterpreted by decision-makers in shifting political conditions. The analysis highlights the durability and flexibility of carceral expansionism in settler colonial and neoliberal capitalist contexts and draws attention to the contradictions and struggles inherent to NZ's carceral crisis.