Conviviality and Survival
Co-Producing Brazilian Prison Order
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Beschreibung
Brazilian authorities continuously fail to comply with international norms on minimal conditions of incarceration. Brazil's prison population has risen ten-fold since the country's return to democracy in the 1980s. Its prisons typically operate at double official capacity and with 100 prisoners for each guard on duty. Officers do not maintain a permanent presence in the cell blocks. At the same time, however, the average Brazilian prison is not as disorderly or its staff-inmate relations so conflictual as our established theories on prison life might predict. This monograph explores the means by which Brazilian prisons function in the absence of guards. More specifically, the means by which prison security and inmate discipline is negotiated between prison managers, gangs and the wider inmate body. While fragile and varied, this historical tradition of co-produced governance has for decades kept most prisons in better order and enabled most prisoners to better survive.
Brazilian authorities continuously fail to comply with international norms on minimal conditions of incarceration. Brazil's prison population has risen ten-fold since the country's return to democracy in the 1980s. Its prisons typically operate at double official capacity and with 100 prisoners for each guard on duty. At the same time, however, the average Brazilian prison is not as disorderly or its staff-inmate relations so conflictual as our established theories on prison life might predict. This monograph explores the means by which Brazilian prisons function in the absence of guards. More specifically, the means by which prison security and inmate discipline is negotiated between prison managers, gangs and the wider inmate body. While fragile and varied, this historical tradition of co-produced governance has for decades kept most prisons in better order and enabled most prisoners to better survive.
First book published in English to focus on prisons in Latin America Focuses on the self-governing aspects of prison life Utilizes unique ethnographic research Comparative focus
Autor*in
Sacha Darke
Themen in »Conviviality and Survival«
Latin America Global South Postcolonial Prisoner Prison staff Ethnography Penitentiary
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“I believe this book is an important contribution to prison studies, and should certainly be read by scholars interested in this subject, as well as by the general public.” (Bárbara Barraza Uribe, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, March, 2020)
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“A fascinating and riveting account that marks a major advance in our understanding of Brazilian prison social order.” (David Skarbeck, Associate Professor in Political Science, Brown University, USA)
“In 1922, the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski stressed the value of the methodological sincerity of authors. Almost a century later, the distinction between what was seen by the researcher, what has been reported to him, what is the researcher's interpretation, and what is the interpretation of those he studies – whose explicitation Malinowski defines as methodic sincerity - is still rare. I have no doubt that Conviviality and Survival, where Sacha Darke analyses with extreme sensitivity and sagacity the specificities of the Brazilian prison system, is one of these rare works.” (Karina Biondi, Associate Professor, State University of Maranhão, Brazil)
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