“Free” and “unfree” money in German prisons: The role of accounting in educating public service users

Abstract

This paper explores how public organizations use accounting as a pedagogical instrument for educating individual citizens. Drawing on conceptions of financial literacy and governmentality, our paper presents the findings of a qualitative case study of German prisons and analyzes how accounting practices shape interactions between public organizations and individual citizens. Our findings show how three types of financial accounts—prison money, gate money, and private money—grant prisoners differentiated access to funds. Prison administrators refer to these accounts as “free” or “unfree,” depending on whether prisoners can decide how the money will be used. The study reveals how German law, ministries, and prison administrations attach three basic virtues to prisoner accounts—legal consumption, financial prudence, and social responsibility—in an attempt to include individuals (back) into a population of economically and socially functioning citizens. To public management research, this paper contributes a description of how public institutions employ accounting as a pedagogical technology in interactions with individual citizens. To prior works on financial literacy, we add the idea that educative measures not only produce viable and disciplined market actors, but also transport specific virtues of being a social citizen. Finally, our study discusses how disciplinary and postdisciplinary notions of accounting interact and provide possibilities for governing through freedom—even behind bars.

A review and synthesis of contemporary sustainability accounting research and the development of a research agenda

“…Examples of articles excluded are as follows. Baker and Brewis (2020) investigates gender inequality in the accounting profession and Iloga Balep and Junne (2020) explores the potential of using accounting as a pedagogical instrument to foster resocialisation of prisoners. Although these studies relate to accounting and social issues in organisational settings, they are not related to measurement, management or communication of sustainability impacts.…”

Accountability, emergency and liberty during COVID-19 in the UK 2020–22

“…Modern writers have reaffirmed that an agent is "normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity" and that you lack liberty "only if you are prevented from attaining a goal by human beings" (Berlin, 2017, p. 16). Accounting scholars have often pointed out that this form of liberty can actually enable the exploitation of otherswhether ex-slaves in the American South or the neo-liberal subject in the modern world (Neu and Graham, 2006;Oldroyd et al, 2018;Balep and Junne, 2020).…”

“…This definition of liberty has been influential in the last century and is often described, following Isaiah Berlin, as negative liberty (Berlin, 2017;Podoksik and Elazar, 2021). It has frequently been the form of freedom discussed in the accounting literature (Neu and Graham, 2006;Oldroyd et al, 2018;Balep and Junne, 2020). However, it struggles to articulate how the…”

“…It has frequently been the form of freedom discussed in the accounting literature (Neu and Graham, 2006; Oldroyd et al. , 2018; Balep and Junne, 2020). However, it struggles to articulate how the state can be justified in taking action that severely restricts the individual choices of citizens as any such restriction becomes a restriction on their liberty.…”

“Managing” wicked problems: Uncovering the roles of budgets, financial systems, and collaboration

“…Both the article by Newberry (2020) and the one by Lagström and Ek Österberg (2020) provide us with more context‐specific analyses of the roles of financial systems for managing wicked problems. On a similar note, Lloga Balep and Junne (2020) explore the use of accounting for managing wicked problems at the micro level. They do so by focusing on the relationship between prisons and prisoners.…”