Abstract of the Dissertation s3

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Punishment and Perversion: Law, Media, and the Meaning of Prison Rape

by

Michael Allen Smyth

Doctor of Philosophy in Criminology, Law and Society

University of California, Irvine, 2009

Professor Valerie Jenness, Chair

My dissertation investigates the role of cultural forces and attendant ideologies in determining the current field of thought about rape in carceral settings. Very broadly, I locate this research within the sociology of punishment. More specifically, the theoretical platform upon which my analysis is mounted draws upon two previously un-related perspectives, Garland’s (2001) cultural-analytic model and constitutive legal scholarship. Focusing on legal and print news media discourse generated from 1969 through 2006, this research reveals the genealogy of the arguably iconic meaning of “prisoner rape” reified in the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 and, in doing so, illuminates a number of ideological conflicts in how sexual violence and state punishment are understood.