Unpacking the Paradox of the 'Human RIghts Prison' in the Context of Everyday Life

• In Event: Critical Carceral Studies in Action: Geographies, Discourses, and Technologies

Abstract

Human rights and incarceration rarely emerge as open bedfellows. Human rights, as a discourse, often materialize as a possible solution to or protection against the violence of prison; however, abolitionist and critical prison scholarship provides evidence that this perceived relationship is precarious at best. This paper analyses the interplay between human rights and incarceration through a reading of the Alexander Maconochie Centre in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). The Centre is known colloquially as the ‘human rights prison’ for its compliance with the Corrections Management Act 2007, which requires a ‘healthy prison’ philosophy, and with ACT legislation, which endorses a commitment to a human rights culture. The human rights prison, I argue, offers an instructive paradox regarding how the convergence of human rights and incarceration operates in the service of the state maintenance, symptoms of what Elizabeth Povinelli refers to as late liberal imaginaries. To unpack this paradox, I draw upon carceral geography to map the terrains that constitute the Alexander Maconochie Centre. In doing so, this paper attends not only to the localized conditions in and around the site of the prison, but also to the legacies of law and settler (post)colonialism that inform the contemporary Australian context.

Author

• Kathryn Henne, University of Melbourne