This is the author's accepted manuscript of an article published in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal and is made available through a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial International Licence 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. The final published version is available at: Silva, A.R., Rodrigues, L.L. and Sangster, A. (2019), "Accounting as a tool of state ideology to control captive workers from a House of Correction", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 33 No. 2, pp. 285-308. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-04-2018-3444