An Analysis of Prisons’ Staff Role in the Reintegration of the Prisoners

The central theme of this research is to explore the effectiveness of prisons staff in the reintegration of the prisoners with specific focus on Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (Pakistan) jails. Mixed method was adopted to carry out the study.  Seven high-profile jails within Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, one jail each, in all the seven administrative divisions, were purposively selected.  Of all 277 respondents, 250 comprised of jail inmates (under trial and convicted adults and juveniles male prisoners) were randomly selected within the seven jails of the province and interviewed through semi-structured questionnaire.  The remaining 27 respondents, purposively selected and interviewed through interview-guide included judges, lawyers, jail officials, human right activists and ex-prisoners.  Further, One focus group discussion was arranged to gain more deep insight into the phenomenon in question. Concurrent triangulation strategy was adopted for the collection and analysis of data.       It was found that prison staff in Pakistan is characterized by lack of will and skill to transform prisons into correction institutions. Their involvement in torturing the inmates, providing them proscribed stuff, sexual assaults on the prisoners, taking bribery for extending legal and illegal favors etc is deeply-seated within the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa prisons. Providing best trainings to the prisons’ staff considering modern-day needs, their salaries increase along with sound service structure, meritorious selection, transfer and up-gradation of the prisons’ employees, recruitment of the needed staff to bridge the staff-inmate huge gape and ensuring the effective accountability system of prisons are the suggested measures to overcome the problem at hand.

Social Media and Political Communication: Usage of Facebook and Twitter by the Political Actors of Pakistan and Analysis of Audience Reaction

The advent of social media has opened a multitude of horizons for political actors and their audiences. Social media tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, are considered to be extremely effective means of propagating self-promotion, thereby enabling the political actors to timely inform the audiences about their political activities and views. Most political actors actively use social media to develop their public relations and project and promote their political ideology and preferences. The purpose of this study was to understand the behaviour of political actors of Pakistan in terms of their usage of social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. The theoretical framework of this study was knit around strategic political communication and political public relations. In addition to this reputation management framework and relationship cultivation framework were also incorporated to explore the strategic communication of political actors. For this purpose, the survey was conducted among the political actors who were the members of provincial assemblies (MPAs) and National assembly (MNAs) in the last democratic regime i.e. 2013-2018. The total number of the respondents of survey was 247 out of which 207 were MPAs and 40 were MNAs. The purpose of the survey was to gather information about the purpose of using Facebook and Twitter and the quality of relationship they were cultivating with the audiences. Three different variables of quality: trust, satisfaction and responsiveness were selected from the work of Hon and Gruing (1999) and applied to this study. The content analysis of Facebook pages and Twitter accounts of 34 MNAs was also conducted to evaluate the purpose of using Facebook and Twitter, image building and language used in posts. In addition to this, results of survey of MNAs and content analysis were also compared to see if there was any consistency between the perceived purposes stated by the political actors in the survey vis-à-vis the actual purposes depicted xvii in their shared content. The variable of credibility from the work of Kiousis, Mitrook, Wu & Seltzer (2006) was also studied to explore the reputation management strategy of the political actors. Based on the findings, it was concluded that most of the political actors were using Facebook and Twitter to propagate their own political agendas. They were also sharing personal content to cultivate their relationship with the masses and manage their reputation. Nonetheless, in this process they might be ignoring the quality and strength of the relationships. In terms of audience engagement, it was found that the political actors were generating different audience engagement on Facebook and Twitter with reference to purpose, language, nature and image building. It can also be inferred that the political actors were enjoying more credibility on Facebook as compared to Twitter as they were facing discouraging and abusive comments more on Twitter.