Warfare Tactics and Techno-Managerial Solutions: The Public Private Management of the Brazilian Prison Crisis

Abstract

Táticas de guerra e soluções tecnogerenciais: A administração público-privada da crise prisional brasileira examina as interações entre os setores público e privado no processo de securitização tecnológica do sistema penal brasileiro, após uma série de rebeliões prisionais lideradas pela "facção criminosa" Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), no ano de 2006. Ao analisar os discursos e racionalidades mobilizados por políticos, legisladores e empresários no âmbito da CPI do Sistema Carcerário instalada no ano de 2008, o artigo evidencia que a crescente presença do capital privado no sistema de justiça criminal brasileiro vem ativando conexões táticas e discursivas entre a lógica gerencial de vigilância e a racionalidade repressiva militarista como estratégias centrais para a gestão prisional no país.This article examines the interactions between the public and private sectors in the process of increasingly endowing the Brazilian penal system with security technologies in the wake of a series of prison rebellions led by the "criminal group" Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). By discussing the discourses and rationales mobilized by politicians, legislators and businessmen within the scope of the Congressional Inquiry of the prison system established in 2008, the article shows that the growing presence of private capital into the Brazilian criminal justice system activates the technical and discursive connections between cost-effective surveillance and violent repression as the main strategies for prison management in the country.

Penal state power in Latin America: Cases, concepts and questions for the political sociology of penality

“…Incarceration's deployment since the late 20 th century at unprecedented scale has corresponded to people being held captive by an archipelago of carceral spaces and infrastructures (Macaulay, 2013; O’Neill & Fontes, 2017; Thompson, 2022). State authorities have invested in expanding carceral state capacities as well as experimented with and adapted a range of administrative models and control techniques circulating globally—from U.S. supermax penitentiary structures, to U.K. “information‐based” models of administration, and the privatization of a range of carceral functions (Campello & Minhoto, 2023; Garces, 2014; Macaulay, 2013). New administrative models have also been developed by local reformers, most notably the Brazil‐originated model of “co‐governance” between incarcerated people and a faith‐based non‐governmental organization, the Association for the Protection and Assistance of Prisoners (APAC); this APAC model has in turn circulated to other countries regionally as well as western Europe (Macaulay, 2013).…”