The manifested and hidden finalities of the prison penalty: a critique took from the reality of the Brazilian jail system

Abstract

In between the failure of the ideological purposes of criminality repression and condemned correction, remains the Penal Law in crisis. This one, for its time, as ZAFFARONI teaches us, has nothing to do with an impossibility of the application of the penal system in concrete situations, but sooner, to a crack of the penal-juridical discourse which is so huge, that it no longer corresponds to its practice. Meanwhile, the prison sentence still stands as the penalty par excellence; not for its efficacy, but for its obviousness. The one called "the penalty of the civilized society" is nothing more than a detestable recourse, of which it has not been yet possible to put aside. Obviousness is demonstrated, as well, in its manifested role, which is, being apparel that is able to transform and to reeducate individuals, correcting them, so as to turn them into tractable and useful people before society. It has been hidden, on the other hand, the prison as the coercion of the body, as a way of submission of the incarcerated before the system its own - individuals are divided, classified, and trained; they have their behavior codified and their liberty laid out, confined in a real full-time reformatory. The isolation is veiled, as well as the institution of purely vertical relations, amid machinery of repression and despotic discipline. Thus, it is worth making an analysis of the manifested and hidden finalities of the prison penalty - taking from a critique of Brazilian jail reality -, in search of possible responses to the actual crisis panorama that undertakes the (repressive) penal system.(AU)