Reshaping carceral transparency: civil-society counterveillance within the Spanish prison and immigration detention systems.

• In Event: PWG - Control, transparency, and sentence planning

Abstract

This study offers an overview of civil-society organizations as counterveillant actors playing a role in the production of transparency within the Spanish prison system (SGIP), the Catalan prison system (SMPRAV), and the Spanish immigration detention system (CIES). This exploration is part of the "Prison Transparency Project," which aims to gather comparative data on prison and immigration detention systems in Canada, Spain, and Argentina. The Spanish case was approached by conducting 17 semi-structured interviews with 14 different right-based NGOs and monitoring organizations. This unofficial oversight counteracts the asymmetry and selectivity of carceral transparency from below, which is the outcome of an ongoing struggle that reshapes the experiences of incarcerated people (Moore et al., 2024). The main findings highlight a lack of trust in both official oversight mechanisms and institutional transparency, which is perceived to change profoundly across facilities and over time depending on the political will of the administration. Therefore, advocacy groups emphasize the need to develop tools of their own to create knowledge about the carceral sites, including setting up a strategic coordination with different actors (relatives and friends of incarcerated people, journalists, politicians, other NGOs…) and resorting to the courts to get access to information and both report and raise awareness on human rights violations. Finally, findings show that the activity of community groups implies a level of collaboration with the carceral administrations that varies according to the nature of each organization, their resources, political standpoint and reporting history.

Keywords
Carceral transparency, access to information, counterveillance, right-based NGOs, human rights violations.

References
Moore, H., Brandariz, J.A., Chartrand, V., Kilty, J.M., Moore, D., Sozzo, M., & Turnbull, S. (2024). Cultures of transparency in carceral governance: lessons from the global North/South divide. Incarceration, 5, 1-19. 10.1177/26326663241286171.

Authors

• Elena Algaba, Universitat de Barcelona

• Pablo Pinochet-Ábalos, Universitat de Barcelona