Prisons, Inmates and Governance in Latin America

This edited collection addresses the topic of prison governance which is crucial to our understanding of contemporary prisons in Latin America. It presents social research from Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay and Argentina to examine the practices of governance by the prisoners themselves in each unique setting in detail. High levels of variation in the governance practices are found to exist, not only between countries but also within the same country, between prisons and within the same prison, and between different areas. The chapters make important contributions to the theoretical concepts and arguments that can be used to interpret the emergence, dynamics and effects of these practices in the institutions of confinement of the region. The book also addresses the complex task of explaining why these types of practices of governance happen in Latin American prisons as some of them appear to be a legacy of a remote past but others have arisen more recently. It makes a vital contribution to the fundamental debate for prison policies in Latin America about the alternatives that can be promoted.

1. Introduction Inmate Governance in Latin America. Context, trends and conditions.- Part I. Emergence and Transformations.- 2. Governance and Legitimacy in Brazilian Prison: From Solidarity Committees to the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) in São Paulo.- 3. Tales from La Catedral: the Narco and the Reconfiguration of Prison Social Order in Colombia.- 4. Provós, Representantes, Agentes: The Evolution of Prison Governance Arrangements in the Dominican Republic’s Prison Reform Process.- Part II. Dynamics and variations.- 5. The carceral reproduction of neoliberal order: Power, ideology and economy in Venezuelan prison.- 6. Enduring lock-up. Co-governance and exception in Nicaragua’s hybrid carceral system.- 7. Co-governance of dialogue: hegemony in a Brazilian prison.- 8. A Decolonial and Depatriarchal approach to Women’s Imprisonment: Co-governance, legal pluralism and gender at Santa Mónica prison, Perú.- 9. Evangelical Wingsand Prison Governance in Argentina.- Part III. Alternatives?.- 10. The ‘prisoner-entrepreneur’. Responsibilization and co-governance at Punta de Rieles prison in Uruguay.- 11. Radical Alternatives to Criminal Detention.- 12. Epilogue. Inmate Governance in Latin America. Comparative and theoretical notes.

Máximo Sozzo is Professor of Sociology of Law and Criminology and Director of the Crime and Society Program at the National University of Litoral, Argentina. He has held a number of visiting appointments in Latin American and European universities, most recently at the University of Torino. He has been Straus Fellow at the Law School of New York University and Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory. His research explores the contemporary transformations of punishment in Latin America, the history and present of travels of knowledge on the criminal question at a global scale, and the debates around southernizing and decolonizing criminology.