Dumavor, Roland, authorJacobi, Tobi, advisorLangstraat, Lisa, committee memberHogan, Michael, committee member2020-09-072022-09-022020https://hdl.handle.net/10217/211998The prison and the criminal justice systems in Ghana are fraught with serious challenges that relate to injustice and inhumane prison conditions. Most of the incarcerated people suffer lack of adequate legal aid, torture, and imprisonment for minor offenses among others. Even though national governance in the area of criminal justice and its related concepts such as legislation, arrest, trial and punishment are obligations and responsibilities of a nation state, international organizations play a key role in ensuring that the nation states execute their duties in ways that meet international standards. The purpose of this study is to investigate how Amnesty International and the United Nations employ discourse, through text, to bring and sustain attention to the issues of human rights abuse and injustice in the Ghanaian carceral and criminal justice systems. The primary question driving this research is: What role do international organizations, specifically Amnesty International and the United Nations play in bringing attention to the issues of criminal injustice and dehumanizing conditions of the places of incarceration in Ghana, and how do they use texts to play this role? In order to address the research question underlying this study, I seek to understand: 1) how these international organizations use their texts to afford or deny agency to prisoners, 2) how the organizations construct identity and relations, maintain human dignity in carceral and criminal justice practices, and 3) how the texts produced and circulated by these organizations effect change in the carceral and criminal justice practices. This study presents a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of six selected texts produced by these international organizations on the carceral and criminal justice practices in Ghana. Norman Fairclough's three-level approach to the CDA (test analysis, discourse practice and social practice) was used to analyze the selected texts. The findings of the analyses identify and explain the discourses of humanization, effective criminal justice, and transformation through representations of power, human rights and justice, prison conditions and identity. Thus, representation and discourse are employed by Amnesty International and the United Nations in their texts to: 1) bring attention to injustice and dehumanization in carceral and criminal practices, 2) call for prison and criminal justice reforms, and 3) create space for the voices of the marginalized (the incarcerated) people.born digitalmasters thesesengCopyright and other restrictions may apply. User is responsible for compliance with all applicable laws. For information about copyright law, please see https://libguides.colostate.edu/copyright.critical discourse analysisincarcerationrepresentationdiscoursecriminal justiceNGOsText