Poor-blaming and poor-shaming have become intrinsic parts of the neoliberal order. For neoliberal discourse to enter and to dominate wider public 'common sense', vehicles of 'populist language' are required and the mass media has taken a central place in propagandising neoliberalism through their narration of poverty. This article focuses on so-called 'reality TV' and its neoliberal framing of the poor, particularly since 2007 and specifically in its generation of support for, and acquiescence in, 'austerity'. We argue that what these programmes provide is a representation of poverty which is politically expedient but socially divisive. As criminologists, we suggest that this representation symbolises the intensification of what Cohen (2002: xxi) noted as the prominence of '"welfare cheats", "social security frauds" and "dole scroungers" as fairly traditional folk devils. Further, we argue that an intensification in the denigration of the poor and the marginal in these programmes can be traced across three phases, from 2009 onwards, defined by their key features. Whilst not neatly discrete, these phases mirror the neoliberal political shift from welfare to punishment. They manufacture 'epidemic problems' that are seen to require urgent remediation. Yet the status and nature of these problems are defined through deception and the forms of intervention required are determined through individualised and moralised neoliberal prescription.

Abstract:This article presents an analysis of the historical development of prison tourism in Britain and the ways in which prisons are currently represented via prison museum websites. While there has been significant examination of various prison museums overseas there has been comparatively little published on these institutions in Britain. In response to contending pressures, prison museums have endeavoured to present a balanced and objective depiction of past prison systems whilst their promotional websites, which serve to draw in customers, frequently rely on 'popular' depictions. These representations raise important questions as prisons cannot be seen as neutral or apolitical, neither those in the early twenty-first century nor those of the past. Despite these pressures, prison museums have great potential to increase public understanding of the prison and this article promotes a more ethical, multi-perspective and politically diverse interpretation within prison museums.

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Dartmoor is one of the oldest British prisons still in use. Opened in 1809, it quickly gained a brutal reputation that its later history has done little to dispel. The image of Dartmoor has loomed large in England's penal and cultural past and endures because of its combination of particular architecture, topography and inmate population as well as its unique capacity to invoke, within the public consciousness, an idealised and even mythical representation of all prisons. This article examines how a combination of physical and expressive factors has established and perpetuated the brutal, yet 'darkly glamorous', image of Dartmoor prison and its prisoners.