As territorialidades e o cotidiano da prisão : estudo de caso do Centro de Ressocialização de Cuiabá/MT

Abstract

The encarcering rates in Brazil are alarming – we have the 4th greatest number of prisoners in absolute numbers in the world. They are 549.577 prisoners and we show one of the greatest overcrowdings in the world, with a 240.503 vancancies deficit. This scenario is reason of preoccupation on the account of the authorities and the organized civil society. We should investigate, debate and get to know the prisonal spaces in order to overcome lack of planning of the public power and the engagement of the civil society on this issue, putting an end to stereotypes on prisons and opening doors to a process of transformation of these spaces. Our investigation aims to comprehend the dynamics of the prisonal life through specialized social practices, highlighting the survival and organization strategies within the prison, understading how the struggle for power in this space occurs: the control, management and appropriation of spaces by the prisoners, pointing out how prisoners are active subjects in this process. The case study is at the Centro de Ressocialização de Cuiabá (Cuiabá Resocialization Center), masculine prisonal unit, a penitenciary destined to 470 men, today bearing around 900 arrested men. When we think of prisonal life and the analysis of the everyday life of the prisonal space, we choose the geographic concept of territory and territorialities in a non-orthodox way. We understant that the concept of multidimensional territory grants us the comprehension of powers parallel to the State, which act at times in association and at others in conflict with the latter; and that the concept of territoriality allows us to understand the dynamics of the territorial dispute. The authors that guided our comprehension on power are Paulo Clavar, Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault. Here, we will not deal with power just as a symbol of the authority of the State or a mandatary, but the power contained in the social relations as a group and a producer of assimetries, that is the reason why the concepts of territory and territorialities are central to this work. These concepts involve the comprehension of access, limits, boundaries, the control of the flow of people and the exercise of authority. The groups that comprise the prisonal space are complex and highly heterogenic, possessing schemes in the relations that are hard to decipher and understand. Among these groups, we notice the production of segregations, exclusions and privileges on the access to rights. Education has the power to change the prison environment and creates a new routine, where the School holds debate and freedom. We highlight the role that the marxist perspective and the historical-materialistic method has over our reading of the world, teaching us that science, through research, initiates in the material life, feed engagement and militancy. In order to be able to enact changes in the world, we need knowlege on prisons, on prisoners and on all speeches that sustain this prisonal process. It is important to know how to overcome and think new proposals for Brazillian penitentiaries, compatible with our views of the world, where the isolation of prisons, their oblivion and geographic and social distancing from society are unreasonable.