Managing without Guards (original) (raw)

2018

Abstract

In 2010, the author completed an empirical fieldwork study of an overcrowded carceragem (police lock-up; unit of holding cells) in Rio de Janeiro. It served as a detailed illustration of the futility of studying Brazilian prison order from the top down and from the outside in. Few police officers that worked at the carceragem (pseudonymised as Polinter) had delegated full responsibility for managing daily routines, prisoner and staff–prisoner relations to teams of trusty prisoners and inmate leaders on the two wings that made up its cell block. Trusty prisoners worked as administrators, janitors and guards. They were headed by former police officers, the most senior of who were referred to by other prisoners as Polinter’s administracao (administration) or chefia (management). Together with the wing inmate leaders, these two prisoners answered only to the governor and the general coordinator of Rio’s 16 carceragens. One of the most impressive things about governance at Polinter was almost identical systems of inmate representation operated on both wings, despite the fact prisoners held on the second wing, the seguro (insurance or vulnerable persons unit) did not consider themselves career criminals or their coletivo (the Povo de Israel: People of Israel) a criminal gang. The senior police officers (the governor and general coordinator) had instructed the Povo de Israel how to operate along the same lines as prisoners held on the other (CV) wing. Both wings had one representante da cela (cell representative) per cell and one representante geral (general representative). On both wings, prisoners’ families contributed to a caixinha (collection box), the proceeds of which were used to purchase common goods such as cooking equipment and toiletries. When disputes arose between prisoners held in the cell block or their codes of conduct were broken, representantes gathered together as a comissao (commission) to adjudicate and pass sentence. When they were unable to control a certain prisoner, representantes would inform the police he needed to be transferred to another carceragem. On both wings, most prisoners became representantes based on how long they had been there rather than the criminal reputation they had arrived with. Nor was there any real difference between the types of people that ended up serving time on the two wings, beside the fact prisoners in the seguro tended to be older, most having passed the age where they were expected to earn their living from the illicit economy and to be affiliated to a criminal gang. Prisoners were allocated to the CV wing based on where they lived rather than their being actively involved in gang activity. A number of key features of the balance of power and authority at the carceragem could be generalised to the wider Brazilian prison system. First, while the senior police officers retained the final word on how Polinter was governed, the carceragem effectively operated under a customary rather than legalised order, constructed from informal rules and procedures that had been developed and reproduced in situ. Second, order at the carceragem was achieved through a plurality of police officer and (mostly) prisoner roles and responsibilities. Finally, Polinter was not only co-governed by its inmates, but its order was considered legitimate by nearly everyone that worked or was incarcerated there. Of importance to this legitimacy, the order achieved at the carceragem complied with popular inmate notions of resistance, mutual respect and exchange: to respect to be respected, to share in order to share, the CV representante geral explained it. These three features stand in contrast to the established sociology of prison life literature associated with the classic work of Gresham Sykes and Erving Goffman. In place of defects in an otherwise bureaucratic power, I had encountered a negotiated order that was broadly to everyone’s benefit, and in place of division and disorder among inmates and normative distance between inmates and officers, I had encountered examples of solidarity and reciprocity. Much of this reciprocity was forced in the sense that prisoners and police officers could not manage without it. However, Polinter’s order was not just instrumental. It also included moral values, for instance around the treatment of inmates’ families.

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