The Illusion of Choice: The Visual Hand of the Market and Manufacturing Consent for the Privatized Prison Telecommunications Sector

• In Event: Seeing Punishment: Understanding Incarceration and Structural Violence Through Visual Data

Abstract

This project makes use of an original dataset of images, videos, and text captions scraped from the websites of privatized telecommunications companies to illustrate three strategies that firms use to extract a steady stream of revenue from the incarcerated, their loved ones, and the prison system (N=875). These strategies include: 1. The use of taken-for-granted discursive techniques and unambiguous imagery to develop an identity of empowerment and honesty, 2. Diluting the obvious uniqueness of the privatized prison telecommunications sector through dedicated partnerships with non-prison specific industries and the selective imagery that conceals the real-cost of products and services, and 3. Conspicuous presentations of reality that sidestep the harsh realities of incarceration. We argue that privatized prison commerce is better understood as a type of social construction, rather than as a social reality because of the painstaking commitment and financial resources that are marshaled to justify a privatized prison telecommunications sector to various public stakeholders. This project also reveals several novel challenges to reducing inequality and improving prison phone justice that move the conversation beyond simply the reducing cost of a call. These challenges have previously been overlooked in research and by policymakers.

Authors

• Lydia Bundick, Sam Houston State University

• Alexander Kinney, Sam Houston State University

• Nathan Kruis, Penn State Altoona

• Nicholas Rowland, Penn State Altoona