Change, struggle and complexity within the Chilean penal field

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the organisational field level of the Chilean criminal justice system, namely, a group of organisations that provide similar goods and services, forming a distinct area of institutional activity (Dimaggio & Powell, 1991). This construct connects organisational and individual levels by delving into the material, formal and subjective aspects of organisational life. In addition, in order to establish and clarify the landscape of this research, the thesis situates the field by disentangling its institutional infrastructure (Greenwood et al., 2011).

The research uses the conceptual tools and mixed methods of institutional theory to accomplish these tasks. In contrast to other applications of institutional theory in criminal justice, this research does not set out to investigate isomorphic processes of penal expansion. Rather its focus is upon the internal complexity of the Chilean penal field itself. This perspective allows ideas such as logics, structural overlapping, and struggle to be developed so as to explain conflicting and contradictory processes within penal organisations – here involving an extended retrospective case study (Flick, 2019) of the Gendarmería de Chile, the Chilean prisons agency. In seeking to capture both individual and organisational responses to change, it undertakes a qualitative and quantitative analysis of prison governance and regulation over the last 100 years. It also documents the Gendarmes’ institutional biographies through extended interviews.

The question that guided the research was about change in Gendarmería, understood in terms of increasing levels of complexity in the penal field. Specifically, it provides findings on how Gendarmes’ social backgrounds have shaped internal practices and moulded organisational struggles. The thesis offers an account of Gendarmería’s organisational struggles shaped by the external pressures and the complexity of its organisational field, the prison system. It thus contributes to understanding the peculiarity and complexity of the relationship between Gendarmería and the penal field in the Chilean context. Finally, the thesis offers insights into the struggles arising across the organisation’s history and considers how this shapes its contemporary challenges, opportunities, and constraints to change. Accordingly, the research contributes to a better understanding of the complexity of the Chilean penal system by encompassing micro, meso and macro levels of analysis.