Unmasking Privatization: Discursive Strategies and the Construction of CCA’s Public Image

• In Event: Media and Public Policy

Abstract

The Corrections Corporations of America (CCA) is the largest businesses in the for-profit prison industry. Since its founding in 1983 CCA has experienced rapid growth and its continued growth seems all but certain, notwithstanding numerous substantiated allegations of fiscal irresponsibility, corruption and human rights abuses. In this paper I report on a critical discourse analysis of CCA’s website with which they communicate with shareholders and the public. My analysis reveals discursive strategies that construct CCA as a benign actor working on behalf of a morally virtuous public. Understood against the backdrop of abuses and fiscal misconduct, these strategies highlight ways in which CCA legitimizes what they do and masks abuses.

Author

• Bethany Callan Nelson, University of Tennessee