The Community of Believers: Law, Rituals and Magic in a Self-Governed Bolivian Prison

Cerbini, Francesca

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-61499-7_9

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 10 publications

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“…Another common trend which affects levels of prisoners’ control is the frequent involvement of inmates in activities of maintenance and administrative tasks, as discussed above. This is actually a common element of prisons in Latin America (Cerbini, 2021; Peirce & Fondevila, 2020; Weegels, 2020) and other peripheral contexts (Butler, Slade & Dias, 2018; Jefferson & Martin, forthcoming), not being observed in prisons in core countries. Given this context, some scholars refer to Brazilian – and Latin American – prisons as ‘co‐governed’ (Biondi, 2017; Cipriani & Azevedo, 2020; Darke, 2018; Darke & Karam, 2016; Dias, 2011; Skarbek, 2020) prisons, where inmates rule prisons in collaboration with prison staff in an endemic way, and not extraordinarily.…”

Section: Institution Of Control and Neutralisation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Brazilian prisons in times of mass incarceration: Ambivalent transformations

Santo

2022

Howard J Crime Justice

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Most of the scholarship on the 'punitive turn' has claimed that there have been two main trends in punishment since the 1970s: the rise of incarceration rates (quantitative dimension) and the worsening of prison conditions (qualitative dimension). Scholars argue that, in parallel with the rise of mass incarceration, there has been a fall of the rehabilitative ideal. In this view, prisons in core countries have basically operated as a warehouse, working towards neutralisation and incapacitation. Both trends are also viewed as reflecting a global convergence of penal policies. The analysis of the Brazilian case challenges this supposed universality. Drawing on official prison data, reports from non-governmental organisations, and secondary data, I argue that mass incarceration has not been accompanied by the same qualitative changes to prisons in 'Western countries' and Brazil. First, features of the so-called warehouse prison, such as low levels of prison activities, have always been present in Brazilian prisons, and are not an effect of mass incarceration. Furthermore, the consequences of mass incarceration in Brazilian prisons have, in fact, been ambivalent and, in some cases, may have alleviated inmates' suffering, rather than intensifying experiences of confinement. Finally, instead of This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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