Co-producing Prison Order

Abstract

The immediate and long-term aims of the current author adopting an interpretivist research framework in his research in Brazil have been to explore: (1) how and why everyday prison routines and staff-inmate relations are different in Brazil to other places; (2) how and to what extent changes can and should be made to the Brazilian prison environment; and (3) what, on the other hand, should be regarded as good practices that might possibly be adopted elsewhere. This monograph has focused on the first of these questions. Without further research, it is not possible to draw concrete conclusions concerning how the dynamics of Brazilian prison order compare with other countries. It is clear, however, that inmate collaboration and self-governance are global phenomena of both historical and contemporary significance, especially in the South. Prison co-governance appears to be the global norm. Ethnographers in other parts of Latin America have come to similar conclusions regarding the plurality and de facto legitimacy of the region’s co-produced prison orders, as well as the need to develop nuanced understandings of the extent to which they can be explained through Northern theories, for instance Goffman’s concept of the total institution or Sykes’ analysis of the pains of imprisonment. The starting points for a Brazilian sociology of prison life should be the effects of fused staff-inmate functions and entangled staff-inmate and prison-community relations, and inmate as well as staff hierarchies. Staff-inmate transactions traverse the boundary between accommodation and resistance. Prisoners and guards work together out of necessity, not convenience; the social order of the prison is neither imposed nor enforced. The second and third questions are matters for future research. It is difficult to reconcile the realities of the Brazilian prison environment with the existing critique of prison co-governance made by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and other international human rights bodies. In the absence of further research, it would be irresponsible to recommend changes to prison rules and routines, prison officer training and so on in Brazil or anywhere else in the world. Still, a couple of observations can be made in the light of the observations made in this monograph. First, while possibly the right aspiration, the view that prisoners should never be employed in a disciplinary capacity is a long way from reality and certainly should not be implemented in Brazil without a corresponding investment in prison staffing. Peer-elected systems of inmate governance have been formalised in other parts of the world, including Latin America, with apparently positive results. Second, those interested in developing alternative models of detention that are human rights observing and genuinely rehabilitative might take note of a recent wave of voluntary sector prisoner and former prisoner managed community prisons in Brazil and other parts of Latin America. In these prisons, the power to discipline has arguably been appropriately devolved to inmates.