Modes of prison administration, control and governmentality in Latin America: adoption, adaptation and hybridity

Abstract

This article analyses processes of international policy transfer and diffusion in an understudied aspect of security sector reform: prisons. It looks at how Latin American countries, especially Brazil, have responded to a growing security crisis of capacity, effectiveness and violence within their prison systems by adopting, adapting and even resisting reform models available globally in three reform areas: prison administration (state-run versus forms of privatisation and public-private partnerships); control (the technologies of super-max versus the intelligence- and relationship-centred approach of dynamic security); and governmentality (the ethos underpinning state and societal treatment of offenders as subjects and objects of penal discipline). It also examines how Brazil has produced its own home-grown models of penal governance—prisons run by civil society in partnership with the state—which challenge some of the current dominant tropes in prison reform. The globalisation of neoliberal modes of governance may often aim at institutional monocropping, and isomorphism certainly occurs, yet examination of actual practices confirms that Brazil, and the region, have adopted a hybridised diversity of penal reforms.

Notes

 1. Evans, ‘Development as Institutional Change’.

 2. DiMaggio and Powell, ‘Iron Cage Revisited’, 151.

 3. Garland, Culture of Control. O'Malley, ‘Volatile and Contradictory Punishment’.

 4. Newburn, ‘Diffusion, Differentiation and Resistance’.

 5. Ibid., 341.

 6. Aguirre, ‘Prisons and Prisoners’.

 7. Tsing, Friction.

 8. Mac Ginty, ‘Hybrid Peace’.

 9. Koonings and Kruijt, Societies of Fear and Organised Violence and State Failure; Frühling et al., Crime and Violence in Latin America; Bergman and Whitehead, Criminality, Public Security; Arias and Goldstein, Violent Democracies in Latin America.

10. For a time series between 1992 and 2010 on these two dimensions see Müller, ‘Rise of the Penal State’, 65 and 67.

11. This is complicated by the paucity of victimisation studies in the region, often conducted sporadically, with no methodological consistency between countries (or, internally, between provinces or municipalities) or over time. Even the best proxy (homicide data) is not entirely reliable, depending on its source.

12. Available online at: http://www.prisonstudies.org/info/worldbrief/?search = southam&x = South%20America.

13. Ungar, Policing Democracy, 29–36.

14. For a discussion about the relationship of ideas of security, rights and (post)neoliberalism in Bolivia, and Latin America more broadly, see Goldstein, ‘Toward a Critical Anthropology of Security’.

15. Washington Office on Latin America, Systems Overload.

16. Ungar, Policing Democracy, 194.

17. By way of comparison the rate for the USA is 716 prisoners per 100,000, Rwanda 527, Russia 487, South Africa 307, England and Wales 150.

18. Gangs come in many different shapes and sizes, with wildly varying degrees of cohesion, hierarchy, membership and involvement in illicit activities, which in turn has distinct consequences for the prison system (Lessing, ‘Dangers of Dungeons’).

19. Rodgers and Muggah, ‘Gangs as Non-State Armed Groups’, 306. Teenage children of the many Central American refugees who fled the civil wars of the 1980s got involved in Los Angeles street gangs. Changes in US immigration policy, domestic penal laws and anti-terrorism laws led the US government to deport to Central America an estimated 46,000 convicts and 160,000 illegal immigrants between 1998 and 2005. They then formed the two main gangs: the maras salvatrucha and the Calle 18.

20. Ibid., 308–309.

21. World Bank, Crime and Violence in Central America, Vol II, 65.

22. Ariza Higuera and Iturralde, Los muros de la infamia.

23. Iturralde, Castigo, liberalismo autoritario y justicia penal de excepción.

24. Amnesty International, No one Sleeps Here Safely.

25. Lessing, ‘Dangers of Dungeons’, 158.

26. Nonetheless, it is alleged that in Honduras, ‘drug trafficking and other organized crime activities are directed from the prisons and by current and former government and military officials’, according to the 2008 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (cited in World Bank, Crime and Violence in Central America, Vol II, vi).

27. Lessing, ‘Dangers of Dungeons’, 164.

28. There are several alternative ‘foundational’ myths according to Biondi, Junto e Misturado, 69.

29. Dias, PCC.

30. Buzan et al., Security.

31. Manwaring, Contemporary Challenge to State Sovereignty, iii.

32. Russell, ‘Political Ecology of Police Reform’, 567–568.

33. Bastick, Role of Penal Reform.

34. The Inter-American Development Bank was the first multilateral financial institution to invest substantially in justice sector reform in Latin America. Since 1998 it has lent U$371 million to 11 countries, and given out U$14 million in technical co-operation grants. Much of this was oriented first to judicial reform (Domingo and Sieder, Rule of Law in Latin America), then to municipal-level crime and violence prevention. One of its four thematic areas in citizen security is ‘judiciary and rehabilitation’, where it emphasises financing alternatives to prison, rehabilitation of prisoners and ‘modernisation of the penitentiary system’, although what this means is not specified (http://www.iadb.org/en/topics/citizen-security/judiciary-and-rehabilitation,2671.html).

35. Marenin, ‘Implementing Police Reforms’; Peake and Marenin, ‘Their Reports are not Read’.

36. Call, ‘Competing Donor Approaches’.

37. Wacquant, Prisons of Poverty, afterword 162.

38. O'Malley, ‘Neoliberalism and Risk’.

39. Wacquant, ‘Towards a Dictatorship over the Poor?’ and ‘The Militarization of Urban Marginality’.

40. Müller, ‘Rise of the Penal State’, 72.

41. Wacquant, Prisons of Poverty, afterword 174

42. One notable reason was the so-called Heinous Crimes bill, passed in a moral panic in 1990, which made several types of serious crime, including ‘drug trafficking’ (including small time dealers and users), ineligible for bail or early release through amnesty or pardon.

43. Salla, ‘De Montoro a Lembo’.

44. Macaulay, ‘Knowledge Production’.

45. Brazil's national penitentiary fund is financed by court fines and the lottery, and accumulated R$1.8billion (US$3.6 bn) between 1994 and 2007. It is used for prison rehabilitation projects and training of guards, but primarily for prison building and refurbishment: in this period the Ministry of Justice claims 78,184 new prison places were provided, 27,223 in São Paulo state alone.

46. Zomighani Júnior, ‘Grito dos lugares’, 105. Between 1997 and 2006 São Paulo state built 101 new prisons at a cost of R$575 million.

47. Monthly data from the website of the Brazilian Penitentiary Department in the Ministry of Justice.

48. Kentner and Prior, ‘Globalization of Private Prisons’, 88.

49. Ibid., 89.

50. Oliveira, A privatização das prisões.

51. Cordeiro, Privatização do sistema prisional brasileiro.

52. Brazilian states that have adopted prison joint administration are: Paraná, Ceará, Amazonas, Bahia, Espírito Santo and Santa Catarina. The two states with planned PPP prisons are Pernambuco and Minas Gerais.

53. Cabral et al., ‘Private Entrepreneurs in Public Services’.

54. Dammert and Díaz,‘Carceles privadas’. Things went more slowly than planned, and only eight were in operation by 2012. ‘Private Prisons: Revitalising the Model’ in Public Policy no. 1076, a bulletin published by the Chilean conservative thinktank Instituto Libertad y Desarrollo.

55. The private partner for three such prisons is a consortium composed of Besalco, Astaldi and Sodexo (BAS Ltd) and for another three the Sociedad Infraestructura Penitenciaria (Compass Group).

56. Cabral et al., ‘Private Entrepreneurs in Public Services’, dispute this, arguing that it was political rivalry by the new, incoming governor that led to this cancellation. The current head of prisons in Paraná told me the costs were the same as in the public sector and that it was a political/ideological decision to resume state control.

57. The contracts had not been put out to tender, published in the government official record, or been regulated by secondary legislation. Cordeiro, Privatização do sistema prisional brasileiro.

58. For data on attempts to expand prison privatisation around the world until around 2006 see Prison Privatisation Report International. On Costa Rica see reports no. 46, 51, 62, 68.

59. Cabral and Azevedo, ‘Modes of Provision of Prison Services’.

60. For example, Cabral and Saussier's data on Paraná state from 2002 to 2005 show that the public prisons held on average 63 per cent more inmates than did the privately run prisons. (‘Organizing Prisons Through Public-Private Partnerships’).

61. Public Policy 1026, page 7.

62. Carranza, ‘Situación penitenciaria en América Latina y el Caribe’.

63. Personal communication, July 2013.

64. Over the years the acronym has stood for a number of very slightly different names, now most commonly Associação de Proteção e Assistência ao Condenado. Some confusion is caused by some of the NGOs working in the CRs in São Paulo state having adopted the APAC acronym, whereas the Minas Gerais group see themselves as the ‘true’, faith-based APAC.

65. The original APAC, São José dos Campos, was closed down in 1999, later reopening as a CR. Meanwhile, an APAC group in Itaúna in Minas Gerais set up in 1984 formalised its running of the local jail in 1991, and began to attract attention in the 1990s when the Brazilian Catholic Church launched a campaign on prison conditions, and the National Congress conducted investigations into the same.

66. Information based on my field research in four CRs in 2004, analysed in ‘Resocialization Centres in São Paulo State’.

67. Tribunal de Justiça de Minas Gerais. http://ftp.tjmg.jus.br/presidencia/programanovosrumos/.

68. Interviews with NGO representatives and state prison authorities in four CR prisons in 2006.

69. Burnside et al., My Brother's Keeper

70. The state court of appeal website asserts that some 33 APAC units are functioning, with another 69 planned. However, only a handful of prisons are run entirely by the NGO: the rest are units within prisons.

71. Lessing, ‘Dangers of Dungeons’; Dias, PCC, 404–417.

72. O Globo newspaper, ‘A atuação do PCC no país [The operation of PCC throughout the country]’, which presents 2011 Ministry of Justice data on the PCC's national reach. http://oglobo.globo.com/infograficos/pcc-mapa-atuacao/.

73. Salvatore and Aguirre, Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America.

74. Jesus Filho, ‘Rise of the Supermax in Brazil’.

75. Neither Catholic Church activists nor international human rights organisations were ever granted access to it.

76. Caldeira, ‘A política do cárcere duro’.

77. Taubaté was closed down and now operates as a psychiatric facility, whilst the RDD is in operation in São Paulo state not just formally in the Centre for Temporary Readaptation in Presidente Bernardes, but also informally in Venceslau I and II and Avaré I and II prisons, which have become unregulated spaces. Dias, PCC, 414–415.

78. Ross, Globalization of Supermax Prisons, 1.

79. Jesus Filho, ‘Rise of the Supermax in Brazil’.

80. Ross, Globalization of Supermax Prisons.

81. See the criticism of the new-style Valledupar prison in Colombia by Ariza Higuera and Iturralde, Los muros de la infamia, 69–70.

82. It was first articulated by Dunbar in A Sense of Direction.

83. I accompanied a delegation to HM Prison Whitemoor.

84. Agamben, Homo Sacer.

85. I periodically discussed the progress of this project with all involved.

86. King, ‘Proposal for Collaborative Project’.

87. ICPS and PRI were already interested in Brazil for a variety of reasons. Julita Lemgruber, former secretary of prisons in Rio de Janeiro under Brizola (1991–1994) served on the board of PRI from 1996 to 2005, and Baroness Vivien Stern, a PRI founder, had visited Brazil a number of times at the invitation of reformers.

88. ICPS, A Human Rights Approach to Prison Management.

89. Field visit, Ministry of Justice, Brazil, May 2011.

90. Dolowitz and Marsh, ‘Learning from Abroad’, 17.

91. Newburn, ‘Diffusion, Differentiation and Resistance’.

92. Ordóñez Vargas, ‘É possível humanizar a vida atrás das grades?’, is a rare ethnography of the APAC system. Most literature on the APACs is short and descriptive, often produced by sympathetic groups, such as Prison Fellowship International. For a statement of the faith-based APAC ‘method’ by its founder see Ottoboni, Vamos matar o criminoso?.

93. Tribunal de Justiça de Minas Gerais. http://ftp.tjmg.jus.br/presidencia/projetonovosrumos/. Methodological issues make recidivism rates hard to verify.

94. I interviewed one mayor (Jaú, October 2004), who had vigorously opposed the building of a CR prison locally, but then featured it in his subsequent re-election campaign, claiming credit for bringing it to the town.

95. Wacquant, ‘Militarization of Urban Marginality’, 69.

96. Biondi, Junto e Misturado; Dias, PCC.

97. Darke, ‘Inmate Governance’ and ‘Entangled Staff-Inmate Relations’.

98. Garces, in ‘Cross Politics of Ecuador's Penal State’, analyses how pre-trial prisoners in a state of legal abandonment consciously deployed religious-political symbolism—‘crucifying’ themselves in prison as a protest—as a means of reframing their plight and appealing to an alternative social/moral code.