No place to run,no place to hide: Socio-organizational processes and patterns of inmate victimization

Abstract

This paper discusses the victimization patterns of inmates of the largest prison unit of Bahia. It uses data from a screening survey with 591 participants, which culminated in 107 semistructured interviews and direct observation. The study demonstrates that 54.3% of inmates report some type of material, physical, and psychological victimization. It asserts that those patterns are structured by institutional violence, jail arrangements, and criminal gangs in the prison. It also demonstrates the influence of the availability of economic, cultural, and social capital in the levels of vulnerability. It concludes that the drama of inmate victimization is a key to understand the dynamics of a prison system that is more dystopian than we can imagine.

Keywords

prisoners socio-organizational processes victimization patterns vulnerability

Introduction

Inherent to incarceration is a conscious intention of inflicting pain which is present in the meaning of the word “penal” in several Western languages (Christie, 1988), including Portuguese. Therefore, to speak of victimization in the prison system, which a priori serves that purpose, may seem contradictory. Was it not for that very reason that incarceration was created, in spite of civilized arguments of dissuasion and retribution? Was retribution not always associated to some sort of pain? (Alvarez, 2008).

In addition to the revengeful leitmotiv of incarceration, another aspect that could characterize this apparent contradiction is the fact that prisoners are not ideal victims (Christie, 1986), i.e. they are not people who, when attacked, receive immediate public attention, since they do not appear to be weak or even “respectable.” In this sense, ideal victims need ideal aggressors: evil, strong, foreign to society (1986), and prisoners fit those labels. Seeing them as victims often requires a cognitive effort that the public is not always willing to make because of the vengeful feelings subjacent to punishment. In addition, the crystallization of the roles of victim and perpetrator by common sense and the criminal justice system prevents them from being seen as what they really are: mutable and permutable social places.

It is therefore not by chance that, although prison victimization is present in most studies,¹ a systematic discussion on the issue is recent. Understood as any incident caused by conflicts endemic to the prison where one person is threatened, abused, and assaulted, this victimization is different from that of other population groups² for three reasons. First, for the harmful influence of confinement and compulsory coexistence with people with different trajectories in a regulated environment with scarce resources (Clemmer, 1940; Edgar, O’Donnell, & Martin, 2003; Sykes, 1958). Second, for the vulnerability resulting from highly restricted, repeated, and shared routine activities (Chubaty, 2001). Third, for its acceptance, despite important local and international variations by the general public, authorities, and the inmates themselves.

In a study focusing on prison control, Wortley (2002) relates disorder and specific inmate misbehaviors, including violence among peers, to environmental or situational conditions that create opportunities for them. Byrne and Hummer (2007) in turn pointed to a positive correlation between population density and adverse consequences for inmates, including levels of violence, increase in self-inflicted violence, perceptions of aggression, and drug consumption. According to them, other variables are also related to prison violence, such as: population profile, management practices, quality of the staff and its proportion to the number of prisoners, situational context, and the implementation of treatment programs (2007). From a horizontal standpoint—individuals versus individuals—and also limited to within the prison walls, Edgar et al. (2003) analyzed prison violence based on six dimensions of conflict: interests at stake, social distance between those involved (and the participation of interested third parties in the episode), catalysts (or tactics) used in the conflict, interpretations of adversaries’ behavior, purposes stated for the use of physical force, and the social context in which decisions are made.

With a relational focus, Byrne, Hummer, and Taxman (2007) considered that the high levels of violence in US prisons mirror those of society at large, given the close relationship between internal and external cultures and the influence of prison gangs. The same point is emphasized by Stowell and Byrne (2007) when they state that prisoners’ behavior is influenced by the norms in effect in the correctional institutions and in their respective groups of origin. Also along this line, the unique experience of incarceration can exacerbate inmates’ preexisting potential for violence (2007). However, according to Hemmens and Marquart (1999), variations in the perception of the level of violence as a function of age and of the criminal trajectory, as well as the aforementioned acceptance of violence, result in many incidents being seen as inevitable or not reported by the inmates.

In this article we discuss the social processes and patterns of inmate victimization at the largest prison unit of the state of Bahia, Brazil, what are the social processes (Giddens, 2003; Paes-Machado & Nascimento, 2011; Walklate, 2003) that structure them? What are those patterns? What are the determining factors of prisoners’ vulnerability? Given the endemic conflicts and the highly restricted character of routine activities in the prison, we argue, on one hand, that those patterns—material, physical, and psychological—are structured by institutional violence, prison arrangements, and, in particular, prison gangs. On the other hand, the levels of inmate vulnerability are influenced by the availability of economic, social, and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1989). In addition to the introductory, methodological, and historical sections, this article has two other sections: one on institutional, interpersonal, and group victimization, and another one on the determining factors of vulnerability, followed by the conclusion.

Fieldwork

The research was developed between 2007 and 2010 at the largest penal facility of the state of Bahia, Brazil, through the presence of one of the researchers as a member of the institutional staff (Almeida, 2011). Before that, this researcher worked at a smaller countryside prison unit, but in order to carry out this study she decided to move to the larger one. As a result, she simultaneously shared the status of insider and outsider (Merton, 1972), because she was well acquainted with the Bahia prison system, but not with the particular environment and people of the Salvador penal facility. As in other research studies, the help of key persons—officers, security guards, and inmates—was essential in order to make contacts, introduce interviewers, and identify the research steps to be taken. Although the transfer of some of these key persons to other units hindered data collection, her status as staff member facilitated recruiting new ones.

From the first day, a field diary was used to record impressions and information. Data collection was divided in three stages. The first stage involved familiarization with the unit’s space, operational structure, and actors. This was followed by an active search for information, with more structured interviews with inmates and staff in order to understand the organization and identify participants. The third stage consisted of focalized contacts with inmates who suffered or committed aggressions. Throughout these stages and during the writing of preliminary and final reports, the data were exhaustively discussed with other researchers in order to overcome the naturalization resulting from the researcher’s insider status, to correct biases, and to deepen understanding.

The participant group was composed of those who went through the Prison Health Sector—for medical or psychological reasons—and, for convenience, of those who were known to belong to the target group—inmates who reported some type of victimization—as well as inmates identified through exploratory interviews by prison staff and through incident and investigation records. The number of participants was determined by saturation criteria. In addition to inmates, staff, security officers, directors, and former directors were selected depending on availability. Of a population of approximately 1350 inmates, a screening survey was performed with 591 of them to identify potential participants among those who went through the Health Service, 531 of whom were imprisoned in a closed regime and 60 in a semiopen regime. Among them, we chose 107 inmates to interview for their availability. The meetings lasted an average of 40 min, but there were situations of multiple encounters with about 40% of the participants. The interviews were conducted on the following main topics: types and forms of victimization occurred, circumstances and people involved. The sample profile of the 591 inmates who participated in the screening survey confirms the extreme social and racial selectivity of the prison system: 47% of them were reoffenders, 51.8% were no older than 30, almost 85% were black or mestizo, 53% had not studied beyond elementary school and had relatively unskilled professions as assistants (16%), farm laborers (12.4%), construction workers (6.8%), painters (5.1%), and mechanics (3.1%).

While the screening survey permitted identifying the magnitude, type, form, and frequency of victimization, the interviews allowed understanding the processes and meanings of victimization and qualifying the perpetrators. It should be noted that victimizations are not limited to the focalized prison unit, but include events that occurred throughout their entire time in custody in the various units of the prison system. This approach allowed us to attain a better understanding of those incidents, since inmates felt more comfortable speaking about situations that in principle took place in those other units or even outside the prison system, but with greater repercussions on the latter than on the unit in question. It should also be noted that, given the large number of inmates and staff interviewees, we added letters to their ages in order to differentiate them.

Overview of prisons

The history of Brazilian prisons is marked by discrimination, injustice, and violence since the beginning. The first establishments in the country were created for runaway slaves and wrongdoers from colonial cities and villas. At that time, jails were regulated by customs which guaranteed security for the property-owning classes and operated through the detention of those who were already convicted and awaited execution of their sentences (Aguirre, 2009). The Casa de Correição da Corte (Court’s Correctional Facility) or Frei Caneca Complex, in Rio de Janeiro, inaugurated in 1834 was the first penal institution in Brazil to incorporate characteristics of Bentham’s panoptic model (Porto, 2007). Although this and other Correctional Facilities were conceived as islands of excellence to break away from existing conditions, they were unsuccessful.

In the early days of the Republic, after the liberation of almost one million slaves, the prison system was expanded to accommodate the increasing penalization of formerly tolerated small crimes such as gambling and vagrancy (Chazkel, 2009). Although the Republic created a new Penal Code, it did not significantly alter the conditions of existing penal establishments. In the 1930s prisons started holding, together with common prisoners, many political prisoners. This same practice, which was adopted by the dictatorship, which was in power from 1964 to the beginning of 1980s, ended up contributing to the professionalization of crime and the formation of the first prison gangs in jails of Rio de Janeiro (the Red Command) and later in Sao Paulo (the First Command of the Capital), and Bahia.

Currently, Brazilian prisons are characterized by overpopulation, insalubrious conditions, permanent confinement, shortage of government investments, and violence between criminal organizations (Anistia Internacional, 2013; UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 2012). In spite of the country’s adherence to international human rights legislations—such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Brasil, 1992); the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Brasil, 1992); and in particular the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture (OPCAT) (Brasil, 2007) and the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Brasil, 1994) as recommended by the UN (1955)—these legislations are not enforced. In addition to the persistent disrespect of civil rights in Brazil’s new democracy, prisoners are considered devoid of humanity (Misse, 2011) and it is therefore believed that they should not only be deprived of their freedom but also brutalized. Also it lacks political will to overcome the strong inertia that characterises the prison system.

Today Brazil has over half a million people imprisoned—the fourth largest prison population after Russia, China, and the United States—in various types of institutions and regimes. This is equivalent to an incarceration rate of 260 per 100,000 inhabitants,³ which places the country in the 49th place worldwide.⁴ Regarding the state of Bahia, its prison system has 11,783 people in 23 penal establishments (Bahia, 2013). This population is mainly male—over 95% of the total—and is composed of people awaiting definitive sentences or who have already been convicted to serve time in closed, open, or semiopen regimes. Together with 4412 people in custody in police jails, the prison population totaled 13,867 in 2011, which represented an incarceration rate of 98.90 per 100,000 inhabitants. With respect to the Penitentiary where this study was conducted, it has almost 1350 prisoners convicted for homicide (32.8%), theft and robbery (25.6%), drug trafficking (20.6%), rape (16.5%), and other crimes. These convicts are mixed together, according to a rudimentary management technology, in four pavilions. Each pavilion has one group of seven prison agents per shift and 340 inmates. This results in a daily ratio of one agent per 49 prisoners per pavilion, including external guards,⁵ which give a sense of the difficulties in supervising the inmates and their organizations.

These conditions together with the limited investments made in intelligence allowed the consolidation of gangs linked to drug trafficking in prisons of Bahia. Generally speaking, those groups transformed the prison from a forgotten hell into strategic rear guards, business counters, and headquarters for crime. In addition, in many cases governance of these prison units started depending on the transfer of state power, also called “negotiation,” to those gangs (Almeida, 2007–2011). Effectively, the three main existing criminal gangs not only facilitate solutions for the prison population’s problems (Paixão, 1987) but dominate vital aspects of the establishment such as the space, security, work, preferential access, and opportunity to commercialize permitted goods and drugs.

Victimization rates

The victimization rate of prisoners during their entire time in custody in various penal facilities is more than double (54.3%) of the rate of the population of Rio de Janeiro city (20.6%) (Borges, 2008).⁶ Thus, of the 591 inmates contacted for the screening survey, more than half claimed to have suffered some sort of aggression. In turn, among the 371 references obtained, several types and subtypes of victimization were identified (Tables 1 and 2),⁷ which are defined in the next section.

Table 1.

Direct victimization by type and agent.

Type	Victimizing agent				Total
	Institution^a		Another prisoner		Total
	%	N	%	n	%	n
Physical	10.0	37	38.0	141	48.0	178
Material	15.9	59	9.2	34	25.1	93
Psychological	4.8	18	22.1	82	26.9	100
Total	30.7	114	69.3	257	100.0	371

Also denominated the establishment’s formal organization.

Table 2.

Distribution of occurrences by type (%).^a

Type	Total
Type	%	n
Direct Physical	37.3	138
Material	35.6	132
Psychological	29.2	108
Indirect	4.7	17
Total	106,8	395

There are cases of more than one event per inmate.

Although direct victimizations among inmates represent more than double the victimizations exerted by the penal institutions, there are important variations in the distribution of victimization among them. While the levels of physical (38.0%) and psychological (22.1%) victimizations among prisoners are greater than those caused by the institution (10 and 4.8%), the latter’s participation in material victimization is almost twice as much as the former’s.⁸ This proximity between physical and material victimization rates among inmates points to one of the most significant conditions of vulnerability. It should be noted that victimization by the institution is constant, continuous, was narrated in a single block, and was thus computed. In contrast, physical aggression among peers was reported in different episodes and was accounted for a number of times, thus appearing more prevalent (Table 1).⁹

Regarding the rate of 37.7% of physical victimization, it is much higher than that found in the research by Edgar et al. (2003) and Wolff, Blitz, Shi, Siegel & Bachman (2007). It is also higher than that reported in another study with prisoners in Ohio, which found a rate of 10% of physical victimization and 48% of multiple victimization—from theft, robbery, and aggression—in the last 6 months of the study (Perez, Gover, Tennyson, & Santos, 2010; Wooldredge, 1998 apud Perez et al., 2010). As already mentioned, this last prevalence rate is closer to the victimization rate found in our study for the whole period of imprisonment (54.3%).

Patterns of institutional victimization

The types of harm inflicted by the establishment’s formal organization or by the state (state harm) (Ward, 2004) are related to the excessive deprivation, which, by exceeding what is necessary or legally stipulated, overpenalizes the individuals in custody (Bentham, s/r apud Mouat, 1891; Sykes, 1958). This harm can be material, physical, or psychological (Table 1).

A large part of material harm (15.9%) is also physical, such as failing to provide essential goods and services such as drinking water, adequate food, sanitation and cleaning materials, mattresses, medical assistance, etc. General unsanitary conditions and lack of assistance favor a greater prevalence of infectious/contagious diseases in those institutions than among the general population. Although in some cases it is impossible to determine whether they were acquired inside or outside the institution, their characteristics facilitate contagion and the onset of illnesses typical of groupings and inadequate health care (Coelho, Oliveira, Miguel, Aguiar Oliveira, Figueiredo et al., 2009; Martelli, Andrade, Cardoso, Sousa, Silva et al., 1990; Nogueira & Abrahão, 2009; Sánchez, Massari, Gerhardt, Barreto, Cesconi et al., 2007).

Some of them become sick due to conditions—food, sleeping on the floor, cold cells. They fall ill with tuberculosis, scabies, joint pains; we ask the family if they had those problems before and we see that they didn’t, that they caught the illness after they were imprisoned. Then there’s the issue of food, of medication, which isn’t always available or is not the right one … And it also happens sometimes that the inmate trades the medicine, for tuberculosis for example, for other items they need. (Staff, 52)

Regarding physical harms, they affect up to 10% of interviewees. They are less common in prisons than in police stations. However, inmates complain of aggressions that occur during transport from one unit to another: I had problems with the police officers who beat me when they transported me from the UED [special prison unit] to the Detention Center because of a jailbreak that occurred but that we had nothing to do with … But they were angry and they beat us all the way there (Inmate, 25_(g)). Other harms result from an excessive use of police force in crisis situations: I suffered physical violence from prison officers at the penitentiary in the interior of the state. I was attacked, I was shot on the leg … it was during a prison riot and the police burst in shooting … I was beaten, since the officers were catching the prisoners in order to beat them (Inmate, 24_(e)).

Psychological victimization (4.8%) is in turn reflected in feelings of humiliation, insecurity, and vulnerability. Living in this stultifying environment, prisoners feel forsaken and humiliated by their dependence on precarious and inoperative services: The system’s dearth of controls makes prisoners’ lives difficult. For example, the time spent working or studying is not always taken into account for purposes of remission [sentence reduction] because information does not travel from one unit to another (Staff, 41). The inmates are also resentful of the public exposure of the crimes they committed—such as bank robberies, international drug trafficking, rape, etc.—which aggravates their risk conditions and leave indelible marks: When I arrived at the observation [wing], the guard said to the others, “this here is a rapist”; and I felt afraid. I didn’t sleep at night (Inmate, 28_(b)). The denial of fundamental rights expresses itself in the body’s exposure to violence by those who should protect it, as well as a lack of consistent initiatives to avoid and protect those in custody from this and many other aggressions.

All of these factors contribute to develop mistrust in the penal system and a sense of insecurity that accompany inmates in their trajectory through prison (Wortley, 2002): I don’t feel safe and officers don’t provide security because inside it’s the prisoners themselves who resolve things. I think it’s the same thing here as in the other jail. I feel the same insecurity here that I felt there (Inmate, 23_(c)).

These data once again point to the lack of enforcement of the aforementioned legislations regarding civil rights and prisoner treatment. In addition, in democratic societies one does not expect conditions contrary to the rule of law and human dignity to be tolerated and sometimes even promoted by state agents.

Patterns of interpersonal and group victimization

In addition to the institutional harms, the patterns of interpersonal¹⁰ and group victimization are structured by jail arrangements, criminal gangs, and social networks. Jail arrangements involve practices, values, and norms that aim at survival, the maintenance of routines, and exploitation of illegal opportunities provided by the prison. In spite of their creativity, autonomy, and persistence throughout time, such instable, protective and predatory arrangements lost some of their space to criminal gangs aforementioned (Almeida, 2011). They centralized part of the diffuse violence—expressive and instrumental (Chambliss, 1967; Cohn & Rotton, 2003)—of jail arrangements, and also do no not hesitate to use coercion against inmates and rival gangs. Regarding inmate social networks (Byrne et al., 2007; Hannerz, 1980), although we dealt with the support provided by family networks and their victimization, we cannot disregard the role of criminal networks both in terms of personal support and articulation of criminal activities inside and outside the jail.

Material victimization

This kind of victimization is related to the extraction of undue or illegitimate advantages from individuals by others through concealment or, more often, coercion. In the present context, forcible seizure of meager goods and monies (35.6%) demonstrates gangs’ tendency to centralize opportunities for plunder and for collection of protection fees.

This seizure involves robbery, theft, exploitation, and extortion (Table 3). The targets can be both the poorest people and those with financial resources but who lack social capital, as we will see later, to avoid it and therefore represent capitalization opportunities for full-time predators. Theft (16%) and robbery (12%) are less reported and in fact occur less than other modalities because they cause confusion and staff intervention, which is not in anyone’s interest. In contrast, exploitation (28%) and extortion (44%) are more frequent because they are more lucrative and inconspicuous.

Table 3.

Distribution of the types of material victimization.

Category	%	n
Robbery	12.0	16
Theft	16.0	21
Exploitation	28.0	37
Extortion	44.0	58
Total	100	132

Table 4.

Forms and prevalence of physical victimization.

Modality	%	n
Torture/electric shock	2.9	4
Sexual violence	2.9	4
Burns\|	4.8	7
Punching	5.8	8
Murders	11.7	16
Perforations and cuts	19.5	27
Beating	52.4	72
Total	100.0	138

Theft and robberies are more common against novices, who do not have jail contacts to protect them, help recover belongings, or even retaliate against the perpetrators. In some cases, these novices can be deprived of essential goods such as clothing, which makes them feel entirely forlorn in this harsh new world where they have come to live.

I had a few things when I got here and they took them from me. They left me nothing, no blanket, no towel … That was my greatest sorrow: knowing that I was in jail and that I had no right to anything. They day I arrived they took all my belongings and they left me with a short and a shirt. I wore that short and that shirt for three months and sixteen days. I’d take them off, wash them, and put them on again … So my worst memories of the jails I’ve been in are from that unit. And nobody helps you. It’s each one for himself and everyone against everyone. (Inmate, 36_(a))

In turn, exploitation involves financial abuses such as: collection of fees, payment for cells and services provided by the institution—but appropriated and commercialized by the prisoners—and inadequate payment for services rendered.

Every pavilion has a leader who is in command and who forces the other inmates to go through various situations and pay certain fees: there are fees for beds, to have a view, to get medical or dental attention … In addition, inmates are forced to buy in the market that exists within the pavilion, where goods are more expensive. They are forced to incur debts which the relatives have to pay. (Staff, 31)

However, extortion is the most frequent type of victimization. Considered the essence of prison victimization (Edgar et al., 2003) extortion involves threats, physical aggressions, forcible confinement in cells, and ransom payments by relatives. Like a number of other lucrative activities, extortion is practiced by criminal gangs with the help of outside accomplices, who play a central role in terms of the articulation of criminal activities inside and outside the jail. The ironic and cruel confinement in cells of those who are already in prison demonstrates the extent to which jail is connected to the greater society, where such forms of forcible confinement in different places have prospered as a way to carry out extortions. The high percentage of extortions of prisoners, most of them from the lower classes, reveals the rapaciousness of the perpetrators.

As soon as they arrive at the unit, the new inmates are scrutinized to determine which crimes they committed, to find out whether they have resources of their own (or from third parties), to define the amount to be extorted, and to calibrate the pressure to be exerted on them and their families (Best, 1982). While recently arrived bank robbers who are not yet integrated to the prison population seem to have money, other inmates depend on their relatives, who spend their meager savings or take out loans to pay the ransoms. In turn, well-off prisoners end up selling their work instruments, cars, and real estate to pay them off and avoid sanctions such as expulsion from the pavilion, as we will see below. In sum, such plundering dilapidates the goods of the few who have something or who accumulated money through crime, and aggravates the misery of the majority who never left the bottom of the social pit.

They extort, they even hold people hostage in the jail itself. There are prisoners who have to sell what they have, their house, their car. There was a guy who had a truck that was worth about, I think sixty or forty thousand, and he had to sell it for twenty or thirty to deposit the money in the account of the X gang, or else … . (Inmate, 39_(a))

I am accused of bank robbery and they think that those who rob banks have money. They once put me in a cell and said that I had thirty minutes to deposit R$7,000 in an account. (Inmate, 31_(d))

Physical victimization

The myriad of physical aggressions that affect, whether visibly or not, the bodies of inmates, reveals the importance of expressive and instrumental forms, as well as the combination of diffuse and centralized patterns of violence related to prison arrangements and to criminal gangs, respectively.

Beginning with diffuse and expressive forms of violence, cases of sexual violence (2.9%) are not among the most frequent due to underreporting, but they illustrate the extreme negative virtues of jail. Despite the significant availability of sex, whether voluntary or paid, provided by conjugal visits, this expressive violence (Chambliss, 1967; Cohn & Rotton, 2003), typical of prison arrangements, continues as an everyday practice as a way of boasting to others, displacing frustration, or compensating for an unsuccessful, imprisoned masculinity (Jefferson, 2002). In accordance with the dramatic atmosphere of prisons (Shalamov & Glad, 1981), this type of event is equally endowed with drama, especially when it is transformed into a happening.

I had already heard of beatings with bricks or wooden blocks, limousine … limousine is when more than ten men grab a poor guy naked, open his legs and go around the whole prison with him hanging in that situation and everyone poking him with their fingers. I was really shocked to see a man go through that. (Inmate, 32_(b))

The targets are those who are accused of or convicted for sexual crimes. In addition, novice inmates, such as a foreigner imprisoned some time back for international drug trafficking, or people with mental illnesses are also preferential targets. None of them feel comfortable speaking about it, as was the case with three prisoners who uneasily admitted having gone through that devastating experience. The imprisonment of pain in a sterile silence, the confinement of the victim’s voice, reveals the extreme cruelty of this socialization or “prisonization” ritual (Sykes, 1958). At the same time, repulsion and shame, reinforced by bullying, generate a specific form of self-victimization among these inmates, which takes the form of self-mutilation through cuts on the arms and thorax (Staff, 47).

Among the apparently diffuse and instrumental forms, the least reported—punches (5.8%), burns (4.8%), electric shocks/torture (2.9%)—exhibit the marks of imprisonment and of ingeniousness to mortify: I’ve been burned with hot water, [with] a plastic bottle; they heat up the bottle and let it drip over your body (Inmate, 31_(d)). As is often the case, minor conflicts that would be easily resolved in other situations are exacerbated by confinement and lead to atrocities: They asked me to assist an inmate that “threw hot water in his ear” and they think it was a cellmate who did that to make him leave when he had visitors (Field Diary, 10/16/2008).

Following a clearly centralized pattern, punishments for drug debts, similar to those outside the prison walls, aim at punishing by inflicting suffering and subjugating the other, as well as dissuading others from behaving likewise: a guy who took three rocks [crack] and didn’t pay was going to die with a water heating coil in his mouth (Inmate, 34_(b)). Likewise, retaliations and counter-retaliations, which significantly increase victimization levels among criminals, are also represented: I suffered a lot; I was beaten because of a problem a guy had with my brother. I told them that if it was outside they’d see (Inmate, 34_(a)). Hence the resentment, the motivation for revenge, and the reinforcement of the retaliation cycle: They beat me with a brick, they gave me electric shocks … It’s hard to forget … But it was only when I arrived. Later, since the guy already “did time” [received his punishment] they forget. Those who are beaten always remember; those who do the beating forget. I’ve seen worse things happen to people … harassment … (Inmate, 24_(c)).

Regarding the most frequent forms of physical aggression—beatings (52.4%) and perforations and cuts (19.5%)—they are termed “cowardice” by the prisoners because they mobilize several people against one to reduce the chances of defense and dilute individual responsibility. They also bring to light the agency and internal hierarchy of criminal gangs and prison arrangements, since they are usually initiated by the leader and then imitated by others. However, in accordance to the style of violence management, aggressors avoid leaving visible marks by using simple and creative techniques, to keep from attracting the staff’s attention.

They beat me with a rock. They wrapped the rock in a pair of pants, they tie the pants’ legs to keep from injuring the person’s body, to keep it from bleeding; then they beat you on the back, on the chest. There was a blessed man who made them stop, because I was going to die. Another one helped me, gave me milk. (Inmate, 44_(a))

Murders (11.7%) include events that originally had that intention and were successful, such as five of them which were investigated by the prison board between March 2007 and June 2010. Carried out by inmates but not necessarily planned by them, they are currently less frequent than in the recent past because they call attention and result in disciplinary sanctions. Motivations are rarely confessed, but in several cases instrumental motives were identified, such as: strategies to control drug markets, retaliations ordered from outside the prison, and sanctions for breaking prison rules.

I was at another unit about five weeks ago [when] they killed a guy by hanging, claiming that he was a rapist. But it was a lie, because they say that the guy sold drugs on the streets for a dealer that was their rival. So they killed the guy eight days after he arrived at the jail. (Inmate, 39_(a))

In accordance to criminal gangs’ management of violence, several murders simulate suicides in order to hinder investigations. It is worth recalling the case of a rape convict, with repercussions in the media, who relapsed when he left the prison on reprieve for Christmas, and killed himself upon his return to prison. However, it was informally known that he “was suicided” because he harmed the interests of those who had been sentenced for the same crime and were waiting for the same reprieve. In spite of this, there are inmates whose lives were threatened outside the prison and therefore feel safer in it than out.

Psychological victimization

Psychological pressures (29.2%) are also divided into diffuse and concentrated, expressive and instrumental forms, which stress, destabilize, and increase insecurity regarding the roles played by targets in their reference groups. They translate into humiliation, bullying (Nagi, Browne, & Blake, 2006), exclusion from conviviality, threats, and expulsion from pavilions.

Humiliation is closely associated to the performance of duties such as dishwashing, cleaning cells, and collecting refuse. Although essential, the polluting character of such tasks makes them be transferred, in humiliating ways, to novices who do not have the means to negotiate them and are perceived as “slaves.” Along this line, bullying is likewise practiced against new arrivals by one or more inmates, taking the forms of “sugesta” (“suggestion”) and “ladainha” (“litany”). While sugesta implies punctual harassment with a low voice, ladainha consists of continuous harassment and misdeeds aloud to “apertar a mente” (“strain the mind”) and provoke stress and fear in the victim: I suffered what they call “straining the mind.” Making one feel tense, to create fear in people who’ve never been in prison (Inmate, 31_(e) years old). Despite the particularities of prison bullying, such as the near impossibility for targets to defend themselves, evidence shows that it is also a privileged way of boasting to others, of building masculinity (Jefferson, 2002).

Even crueler is exclusion from conviviality or “corralling,” whereby the inmate is isolated from the rest, loses his already meager mobility, and is kept from doing essential things: eating, use of the toilets, and access to health services. Indeed, “corralling” is an extreme procedure that exacerbates the hardships of jail and makes the target’s living conditions unbearable.

Corralling is when they forbid you from doing anything. You have no right to anything and have to respect the right you don’t have. You can’t do anything you want, only what they want. If you want to go to the bathroom, the other guy comes and says: “No! It’s me who’s going to the bathroom now.” And if you want to take a water bottle, the guy doesn’t let you take it. People do that out of rudeness or as a way to exercise power. It’s like saying “I am me and you are the shit of the bandit’s horse”. (Inmate, 36_(a))

Threats insinuate or make explicit the possibility of getting hit, creating the disquieting expectation of future harm and the need to look for protection: They wanted to get me there in the pavilion when I arrived because they thought I was from another faction [gang]. There are people there with knife marks on their backs, big knife marks. But I only suffered threats (Inmate, 42_(b)). A distressing risk is expulsion from the pavilion or “going through the gate.” Inmates who, after a number of traumatic transfers from various prison units, create a relatively safe niche, become personae non grata when they come into conflict with their colleagues, for example, for refusing to pay the aforementioned extortions. This results in aggressions that, with staff member’s mediation or the victim’s acquiescence, can result in their expulsion. From then on, the psychologically shaken inmate will have to invest in a costly and risky adaptation to a new pavilion, which, if unsuccessful, could result in new victimizations.

Thing is, one’s psychology is very much shaken because you go into a system [prison unit] and you live there a few days, and when you’re almost fitting in, you’re transferred to another system. And there it’s a different regime. And when you’re almost ready to walk with your own legs, you’re transferred to another one. (Inmate, 28_(a))

Indirect

As part of the prison’s demeaning environment, inmates are exposed to suffering inflicted on their acquaintances, significant others, or people who are closer to them, such as inmate colleagues and relatives. In the case of colleagues, and depending on physical and social proximity, these indirect aggressions (4.7%) are worse than those suffered directly by the prisoner, feeding psychological distress. Evidences are feelings of fear, impotence, anxiety, and hypervigilance, especially among people without a previous criminal track record.

While anxiety and the fear of suffering similar attacks are present in all testimonies, impotence mixed with guilt is evoked by those who had emotional ties with direct targets who they could not help: I’ve seen people dead at my feet, something you can’t do anything about. There was a friend who helped me a lot and he died here (Inmate, 32_(c)). Given the conjunction between objective and subjective insecurity—because of spatial, material, and logistic restrictions (Chubaty, 2001), predictability of places and times, and the difficulty of escaping or resisting—part of this anxiety is displaced to form innocuous or counterproductive psychic defenses such as self-isolation and hypervigilance.

I’ve seen many people leave torn to pieces. Over fifty people attacking one person with wooden blocks, sticks, benches; it’s very scary. Can you imagine if I left here all deformed? So I keep thinking I can’t take a wrong step. I’m becoming very nervous, because I stay vigilant even in my own cell. (Inmate, 36_(a))

Other afflictions result from the impacts of that muddle of shame, stigma, and social failure on families. First, in parallel with the lack of supervision of important things, there is a petty-minded and humiliating control of visits. Second, there is no support whatsoever for families, especially those from distant parts of the state, who in some cases lose their main source of income and endure terrible hardships: There are mothers or wives who crumble inside, borrow money, hitch a ride in an ambulance, humiliate themselves, stay at strangers’ homes, are robbed. All of that often affects inmates deeply (Staff, 52). In addition, fear, the harm caused by payment of extortions and debts, sexual abuses, and so on, suffered by relatives, thicken the stew of misfortunes endured by those people.

Factors of vulnerability

Exposure to risk is a chronic characteristic of the prison institution, which contributes to the development of social practices and modalities of aggression and to the vulnerability of most inmates. A complex interrelation between an environment of risk, power, vulnerability, and individual and group strategies conditions potential victimization. In other words, vulnerability is influenced by the volume and composition of economic, social, and cultural capital—or different types of power and possession (Bourdieu, 1989)—among inmates. In turn, the distribution of this capital manifests itself in five social/organizational factors: a novice status, purchasing power, debts, resistance to prison rules, and belonging to criminal groups (Table 5).

Table 5.

Factors of inmate vulnerability.^a

Category	%	n
Novice status	5.7	22
Debts	14.4	57
Purchasing power	21.4	85
Belonging to criminal gangs	28.9	114
Resistance to prison rules	29.6	117
Total	100	395

Based on the amount of reported events.

Overlapping with the other determinants of vulnerability, a novice status (5.1%) is the focus of socialization or “prisonization” practices similar to rites of passage, which aim at stripping the target of their former identity and instilling the institution’s habitus (Paes-Machado & Albuquerque, 2006). Except that in this case the ritual is duplicated and branches out: the subjects are socialized in the equally brutal domains of the institution’s formal and informal organization, as we pointed out earlier. Thus, differently from veterans or “jailers,” a novice status in most cases implies little or no availability of social capital to defend oneself from abuses associated to these rituals. Ironically, however, the time will come when these inmates will change places and apply, with the determination expected of veterans, the same tricks they themselves suffered on new groups of newcomers (Paes-Machado & Albuquerque, 2006).

When you first get to jail you’re tested in several ways to see your nature, whether you’re humble or arrogant. When you arrive they ask to borrow something from you and don’t return it. If you’re a newcomer, you’re a novice, you’re stupid. Then it starts increasing, it goes on to physical force or worse. (Inmate, 20_(b))

Purchasing power is responsible for 21.2% of prisoners’ vulnerability. Such a large influence of economic capital on the chances of suffering aggression demonstrates the enormous but little remembered similarities between the values prevalent inside and outside prisons regarding money and other factors of social inequality, as well as impunity.

We live in a world of corruption, money, and hierarchy. If I had money I would be in a larger, better space, but I’m in a small space and humiliated. There’s a lot of prejudice here against blacks and the poor. What talks here is money and no one can change that. (Inmate, 26_(c))

In this sense, prisoners from the interior or rural areas of the state—known as “jacu” (a type of bird)—are easy targets because of their lack of resources to defend themselves. Almost a third of prisoners (27.4%) are in this situation, without family or institutional support, and in such an unequal world they are discriminated by their peers. In addition to jacus, there are “rat skins” and “Pharisees,” people who fell into the system’s funnel as a result of minor infractions, with little acquisitive power, without visitors, without the help of relatives—an attribute of status and a protection factor—and who upon entering the prison are unable to offset their disadvantages: Those who suffer most in jail are rat skins. People who have no one for them; sometimes people who come from other places. I remember a guy who died because he insulted someone (Inmate, 25_(a)). In addition, in that group are inmates who develop physical or psychic illnesses, becoming dependent on additional attention from the institution, and are easy targets for their colleagues.

Also at the junction of the lack of economic capital and vulnerability, debts contracted for purchases of foodstuffs, hygiene products, and drugs—used by 52% of interviewees—had an influence of 14.4% in the chances of be victimized. While criminal gangs facilitate those purchases, they do what we shall call here extortive encumbrance of debts, and they are ruthless regarding delays in payment: I never saw a real [Brazilian currency] be worth as much as it’s worth in jail. One real in jail is worth gold. If the guy goes two or three [family] visits without paying a one-real debt, he’s finished. The jail’s leadership never accepts drug debts. When they don’t pay, they pay with blood (Inmate, 33_(e)). Given the stimuli to drown their sorrows in drugs, one of the worst things that can happen is for them to use drugs without having the means to pay for them: Here only those who have money can use drugs, to keep from suffering reprisals. Those who have debts and can’t pay suffer, like many who arrive at the Medical Service all beat up (Inmate, 30_(g)). One possible alternative for some prisoners is their family’s help, as we saw in regard to extortions, to avoid reprisals.

There are mothers or fathers who borrow money to deposit in an account to pay their son’s debt. Sometimes we know it has to do with drugs, sometimes the debt is … to buy food. But there are other things they don’t reveal because they fear reprisals. And it’s not a small amount of money. They brought the money because otherwise the prisoner would die. (Staff, 52_(a))

In addition to physical punishment, prisoners who fail to pay debts become servants, taking on other peoples’ faults such as possession of cellular phones, drugs, and homemade weapons found during periodical cell searches by police officers. There are even those who offer, as yet another collateral effect of intimate visits and the wave of victimization, the bodies of wives, sisters, and daughters to their ruthless creditors.

I remember I once saw an inmate sitting at the door of his cell with his head down, and a line of almost twenty men who went in and out of the cell where his wife was. When it ended, the woman left in tears and never came back. I later found out that he gave his wife to have sex with other inmates because of his debts contracted in jail. (Staff, 52_(a))

In contrast with the knowledge—skills and credentials—that qualifies as cultural capital in the greater society, in prison this capital relates to the internalization of norms and rules that constitute, contrary to the common sense view of prison as a manifestation of a state of nature, the prisoners’ social order. From this perspective, resistance to these rules contributes to 29.5% of inmates’ vulnerability. These rules are stressful and fine-grained. Their internalization requires greater personal self-control than the prisoners were used to in the spacious and less controlled outside world. Like in the Court’s society (Elias, 1987), this learning involves disciplining emotions and immediate impulses, the art of simulation and dissimulation of attitudes and behaviors, which is yet another priceless contribution of the prison system to perfecting criminal skills.

Guaranteed by a fine-grained organization—based on leaders in cells, galleries, and pavilions—rather than any total Goffmanian institution (Sparks, Bottoms, & Hay, 1996), these rules encompass all or almost all internal and external transactions, limiting individual freedom, initiative, and communication, such as conversations, letters and phone calls, to the extreme.

What I can’t stand is not being able to go to the gate to claim a right. I always have to be there with one of them [a member of the criminal group]. The most rigorously controlled thing there is communication, because everything has to go by them. At the gate there’s always one of them who’s stricter than a [prison] agent. Each cell and gallery has someone in charge. If something’s happening in that cell, the person in charge has to speak to the leader, because if he doesn’t speak and other people do, he’s punished. (Inmate, 39_(a))

While a part of those rules condenses common sense, precautions, and corporatism of prison arrangements, the other part reflects, as we have seen, the strategies to control illegal economic opportunities, communication devices (Paes-Machado & Riccio-Oliveira, 2009), weapons and lethal violence by criminal gangs. Some examples of the first type are respect for visits—which includes not causing problems, not looking at visitors, and not going shirtless during visit days—restricting contacts with the staff, and secrecy regarding the prison’s backstage. The second type of rule in turn involves prohibition of drug sales, possession of weapons and cellular phones without permission from the leaders or “jail owners.” Likewise there is also the prohibition of killing (“spilling blood”) without permission and the obligation to follow the prescriptions, also established by the jail owners, regarding the appropriate ways, locations, and times for murders. Finally, in the case of religious prison gangs there is also the mandatory participation in prayer and fasting rituals that reaffirm ideal norms and reinforce collective cohesion. On the other hand, while sanctions for noncompliance are severe and transgressors lack appropriate defenses, they do not constitute a monolithic whole. They not only unfold into other rules and sanctions, but their application varies depending on the personal traits of leaderships, the composition and power relations in the pavilions, on one hand, and social ties, prison time, the way in which prisoners act or behave, on the other (Ramalho, 2002).

Who are the rebels who break these unwritten laws—and now also written, in the context of the rerouting of violence by criminal gangs, in pamphlets distributed to the prisoners? They are deviants, who do not adapt to the oppressive environment created by the institutionalization of deviance whether because they do not share their feeling and values or because they do not fear their sanctions. Among them are heedless and resentful novices, contumacious individualists, entrepreneurs who act in defiance of the prison owners, the mentally ill, those who come from the chaotic institutions for minors or from the streets, and those who do not accept their sentence.

I’ve thought of killing myself and I caused a lot of trouble because I couldn’t accept that 25-year sentence. I received a lot of beatings because I did a lot of stupid things, but it’s because I was revolted … It’s very revolting to be locked up here for no reason … I lost many things. (Inmate 31_(f))

Social ties—“knowledge” and “consideration”—are as important as or more than economic and cultural capital in the criminal underworld. As in the greater society, investing in obtaining and multiplying this capital is the axis of existence, since it constitutes a guarantee of social insertion and reproduction as well as a means for defense and counterattack (Paes-Machado & Riccio-Oliveira, 2009): I didn’t suffer that [violence] here because everyone knows me; at the other jail people didn’t know me. I had to fight in order to keep from suffering ‘comedy’ [abuses] (Inmate, 20_(b)). Effectively, possessing this capital makes all the difference in this ever shifting yet highly regulated and hierarchical world: Those who the others don’t know stay longer under observation—about eight days—while those who have acquaintances in the system stay about 24 hours and are usually invited to a pavilion (Field Diary, 4/14/2009). These ties predominate in many ways over economic capital, since, as we saw earlier, without them even well-off inmates risk being stripped clean. Even when family members offer to pay for protection for their relative, prior arrangements have to be made with the leaders of the criminal groups, which again confirms the relevance of that capital.

Regardless or because of the fact that these gangs are both perpetrators and, inversely, protectors, their members suffer aggressions resulting from internal mistrust and disputes with rival gangs. In other words, in contrast with the firmness of the social capital developed in stable realms and founded on overlapping ties (Coleman, 1988), the ties of belonging here are characterized by volatility. That is why they have more negative implications for vulnerability (28.9%) than others. After all, many are attracted to their leaders, diligent disciples of the neoliberal guidebook of success at any price, role models or “mirrors” in the world of crime. The inmates that enter that world as “soldiers” are the aforementioned “Pharisees” and “rat skins,” who compensate for their vulnerability and leave behind their anonymity, undertaking an ascending path in that underworld. Becoming a member of these organizations empowers the individual and requires effort, which is equivalent to recovering mental health, overcoming failure, and obtaining protection credits (Paes-Machado & Riccio-Oliveira, 2009). Gradually, every inmate will inevitably build a new identity based on their insertion in a subgroup, establishing identification with it and restoring relations with former rivals. In order to integrate, they will have to overcome rivalries, heal discordances, and give conflicts a different dimension. Identification with their interest group (endogroup) unleashes intergroup phenomena that distort their perception, leading them to negatively overestimate the exogroup, which is now perceived as homogeneous, cohesive, and hostile (Myers & Lammer, 1976).

As we know, these ties of belonging are situational and ambivalent. All is well when the leaders are at the peak of their power, assistants and soldiers carry out their duties, and everyone is at ease in the modules they command. Everything goes wrong when leaderships lose power, subalterns fall in disgrace, and any of them has to be transferred to other units (or pavilions) controlled by rival groups that, aware of their membership, will make their lives hell. Because of that, those transfers are executed with great care by the staff. It is also not by chance that many inmates give up rights and refuse the benefit of regime progression, which is necessarily accompanied by unit changes.

They were always after me. I would get involved with certain people in jail and that’s not well seen, you know? So I’d go to a pavilion, it wouldn’t work out; I’d go to another one and it wouldn’t work out either … You spend some time at the pavilion and then you’re attacked: beatings with clubs, knifings … I’m like this [with hematomas]. I was from another system [X gang]; then I went to another pavilion but it didn’t work out. (Inmate, 28_(b))

In other cases, vulnerability derives from the success of subalterns. Between servile flattering and spite from their peers, it is not uncommon for the status as a leader’s assistant or “right hand” to go to people’s heads. They thus begin committing abuses, undermining authority, or trying to take the place of their “bosses.” When their plans fail, the only thing left for them is a cruel death, which confirms their hierarchical superior’s wrath and violent reputation. An emblematic example is death accompanied by brutal cuts to the face to indicate a loss of face and the unmasking of treason.

With the guy that died there it was terribly barbaric. That part of his face was cut from side to side … he tried to get a prisoner’s woman. There are people who sometimes earn the role of prison sheriff and abuse it, they think they own the prison. (Inmate, 36_(a))

The guy that died this week had an ugly death. But he was extorting, he massacred many people. Ten days ago he ordered the murder of one of [name of the organization’s leader]’s guys in the street, and when he was [transferred] to another state prison, the latter said to keep an eye on him because he had other plans for him. He thought he wouldn’t be found. (Inmate, 39_(a))

Once again, survivors and adversaries face the desperate situation of not being able to either remain in or move out of a unit, which is one of the greatest evidences of territorial control in the prison system, the heightened tension of competing relations, and the increase in violence among inmate criminal gangs.

There are many people here who can’t go to that unit. There are people who left this unit and went there and can’t get near anyone, because nobody wants them. There are people who leave and don’t dare come back because they’re threatened by their own colleague. So they don’t dare come back because they may get killed. (Inmate, 38_(a))

Conclusion

While prison has been long associated to the violence that flourishes in it, this relationship is dynamic, transient, temporary, and spatially contextualized. From this standpoint, in order to explain the production, repetition, and mutation of the patterns of prison victimization, it is necessary to consider the links that exist between: the characteristics of the prison environment (Wortley, 2002), the influence of gangs (Byrne et al., 2007), and the dynamics of inmate conflicts (Edgar et al., 2003). It is also important to pay attention to prisoner subjectivities regarding the ways and means to resolve, modify, or reproduce these conflicts.

Plenty of evidence regarding prisons’ structure and operational dynamics elucidate their moral meaning (Birkbeck, 2010) as places where those who are considered devoid of humanity (Misse, 2011) should not only be deprived of their freedom but also brutalized. In this realm of denying rights to prisoners there are no doubts regarding the state’s responsibility for the harms (Ward, 2004)—material, physical, and psychological—inflicted on those who are in its custody. While those harms are not mentioned by international literature (Edgar et al., 2003; Wolff et al., 2007), they contribute, in the context analyzed here, to a victimization rate of 54.3%, which is more than twice that of the population of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

While mobilizing resources, technology, and a mentality of over-penalization subtracts legitimacy from the penalty and ruins the possibilities—if they ever existed—of building new positive meanings to life, it also forces prisoners to fend for themselves, to exercise power through prison arrangements, and to accept, in spite of resistance, governance by criminal gangs. It is from this informal power that the institutive web, with its mechanisms that affect prisoners’ physical safety, emerges. It is thus that, ironically recreating the ontogeny of the state and of the centralization of the means of force within state establishments, criminal gangs catalyze and modulate victimization, minimizing and maximizing institutional damages and interpersonal discords.

The high rates of material (35.6%), physical (37.3%), and psychological (29.2%) aggressions reflect a heightened value of violence, exacerbation of petty conflicts, and frustration of masculinity among inmates. While some of these aggressions, such as bullying, rapes of novices, and punctual physical aggressions, are connected to diffuse, instrumental, and expressive violence of prison arrangements, the others derive from centralized and instrumental violence by criminal gangs (Chambliss, 1967; Cohn & Rotton, 2003). Given the requirements of their criminal business inside and outside the prison, their mutual competitive relationships, and public visibility of their operations, including the relative increase of accountability of the prison system, each gang tries to manage its decisions regarding extortions, physical aggressions, homicides, etc. In other words, those gangs have the power to determine the consequences of conflicts (Edgar et al., 2003) and to redefine them and generate new conflicts, as demonstrated by our findings. First, the territorial control of the prison system by those groups. Second, the management of violence and centralization of decisions regarding physical aggressions and murders. Third, the substitution of theft and robbery for punctual and continuous extortion through compulsory confinement in cells with the participation of outside accomplices exerting pressure on inmate families. Fourth, the exploitation of services, the imposition of fees, and the collection of debts for purchases of permitted goods and drugs, accompanied by punishments against those who resist or fail to pay debts.

On the other hand, alongside vulnerability factors such as a novice status, purchasing power, indebtedness, resistance to prison rules, and membership in criminal gangs, the availability of social capital makes a difference, since, as in other realms, it attenuates restrictions regarding those factors, which would be less bearable by the prisoners without it. Its effectiveness, however, is relative. It does not entirely apply to membership in jail gangs. If on one hand these convene, empower, and protect the people who have fallen in the basements of the criminal justice system, on the other hand they increase their chances of suffering aggressions resulting from a chronic deficit in trust and, in particular, the heightened tensions of their mutually competing relationships. Among the evidences of this are the risks associated to transfers from pavilions and units.

For these reasons it can be stated that criminal gangs reinvented prisons and requalified violence among inmates. While punitive populism and, associated to it, the policies of the war on drugs gave a new meaning, from the top down, to that decrepit and discredited institution (Garland, 2001), in the case of the prison in question and of other Brazilian prisons the change equally resulted from the violent entrepreneurship implemented bottom up by criminal gangs. Under this influence, the prison became an economic enterprise whose purpose is to produce profits for those groups. In turn, facing this situation the criminal justice system continues to play the same game that favors those gangs—to supply them with a young and willing workforce.

Regarding family networks, their support of inmates is the shortest path for them to be affected by prison violence. These effects—backward and forward, inward and outward from jail—we denominated waves of prison victimization. Under this perspective, it can be stated that prisons both reflect (Stowell & Byrne, 2007) and spill out violence to society at large. Thus, the drama of inmate victimization is a key to understand the dynamics, new meanings, and glaring impasses of a prison system that has created more dystopian configurations than we can imagine.

In sum, prisons and their victimogenous processes still lack, years after the end of the military regime and Brazil's adherence to international treaties on human right and the treatment of prisoners, precise and continuous interventions, that is true policies capable of minimizing their effects—for those disempowered caught in them and for the rest of society, since we are still unable to live without them.

Footnotes

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