Flowing chains: the prisons in São Paulo at the turn of the times

In this thesis I discuss the contemporary daily functioning of São Paulo penitentiary system, exploring: 1 the particular processing regime that organizes the convicts flows through confinement spaces; 2 the penitentiary system expansion in rural areas and the prisons, inmates and justice system agencies forms of territorialization; and 3 the supply system promoting minimal survival conditions within the prisons and the various political and material arrangements that characterizes it. Documental research, qualitative interviews and ethnographic observation were the main research strategies. The field work focused on three towns in the west of the state (in the Nova Alta Paulista region) as well as within some penitentiaries in São Paulos metropolitan region where I entered as a catholic volunteer, developing religious, material and legal assistance activities. The central finding of this investigation could be summarized as follows: the everyday operation of São Paulos prisons depends on a broad mobilization and continuous articulation of a variety of agents located inside and outside the institution, mainly prisoners and their families. These finding launches questions about current and hegemonic prisons figurations, which take, on the one hand, prison and society as total different social worlds and, on the other, as a mere incapacitation device. By an ethnographic approach, I intend to contribute to the contemporary mass incarceration understanding, proposing descriptive and analytical parameters distinct from those that are formulated with reference to the experiences of the United States and Western Europe; I also intend to illuminate something of the basic conditions for the emergence of prison factions, especially the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). (AU)