RT Article
T1 Deconstructing imprisonment: Exploring sentencing discourses in the District Court of New South Wales
JF Criminology & criminal justice
VO 24
IS 2
SP 379
OP 394
A1 Taylor, Sally
LA English
YR 2024
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1885427700
AB In Australia, imprisonment remains a popular form of crime control amidst rising costs in prison expenditure and high rates of prison return. While changes to crime rates and to policing policy have impacted the growing prisoner population in recent years, less is known about the language underpinning the courts’ decision to imprison. This article presents the results of a critical discourse analysis on 124 sentencing remarks on imprisonment from the District Court of New South Wales in 2017. Three discourses were identified in the texts as facilitating the justification of a prison sentence: the discourse of control, the discourse of safety and the discourse of duty. These findings highlight the ways in which the prison is constructed and legitimated in the courts, which has implications not only for sentencing policy and practice but also for conceptions and applications of justice more broadly.
K1 sentencing discourse
K1 Punishment
K1 penal abolition
K1 justifications of imprisonment
K1 Imprisonment
K1 Critical Discourse Analysis
DO 10.1177/17488958221117922