Cultures of transparency in carceral governance: Lessons from the global North/South divide

This conceptual article offers new ways to map and understand the role of transparency in carceral governance. Mobilizing our expertise in our respective fields of study, we comparatively reflect on case studies of carceral transparency in Argentina, Canada, and Spain. In each, we decentre forms of transparency favoured by carceral authorities by considering the range of mechanisms and actors at play in the production of transparency. Taken together, our accounts of cultures of transparency in prisons and migrant detention facilities in the global north and south highlight absences and presences of different means of generating transparency across carceral sites and denaturalize northern and state-centric ideas about carceral transparency. Ultimately, our juxtaposition of three cultures of transparency reveals the range of means of generating carceral knowledge and the potential scope for its dissemination. Amidst persistent human rights violations, this work underlines the need for further southernized research on transparency to shape possibilities of carceral governance.