Counter-hegemony in a Brazilian Prison: A Study of the PCC

Abstract

The 'Primeiro Comando da Capital' (PCC) is a Brazilian prison-street group that has been attracting great public attention and has affected prison policies for the last 25 years. In this study I analyse the system of power relations into which the PCC enters, both in inmate culture and in its interactions with prison governance. So far the mainstream literature on prison and gangs has explored the production of governance (of inmates in prison and gangs in the illicit market) without sufficiently engaging with the dynamics of power relations and the agency of groups and individuals in that process. Further, this thesis also seeks to move beyond the criminological tradition of theorising on power that is based on a liberal (social consensus) perspective or, alternatively, that locates power as a top-down exercise of domination. Instead, I suggest the concept of hegemony - power as a different form of domination designed to produce the consent of subaltern groups - and of praxis (agency as part of an interaction between ideology and material circumstances) to further explore the problem from a critical and radical perspective. Using this framework, I have undertaken an ethnography in three Brazilian prisons with prisoners and prison staff, as well as ex-convicts and other authorities, and have arrived at four major conclusions: 1) the PCC acts as a 'party' of prisoners who organise their culture ('the ethics', so-called) through an 'ideology'. 2) The 'ideology' enables a critical autonomy of the subaltern group (inmates) in opposition to the hegemonic form of the prison apparatus - producing a counter-hegemony. 3) Prison authorities must navigate inadequate and poor prison conditions to produce governance not by simply resorting to corruption and coercion but seeking the consent of inmates to their 'containment' in prison. 4) With the support of inmates, the PCC exerts pressure on authorities for a 'dialogue' on the governance of prison - producing 'shared governance', when successful. Therefore, I have found that there is a deep and embedded struggling interaction of the PCC with the inmate culture and in the production of prison governance, and I argue that this transforms the content and form of power relations in Brazilian prisons in the dynamics of producing order with consent and coercion with implications on how we think about prison governance in the Global South in general.