The arrival of criminological positivism in Brazil: overcoming traditional forms of social control.

• In Event: Historical Perspectives on Crime and Punishment

Abstract

The end of the 19th century in Brazil witnessed the arrival of a Republican government and new approaches to punishment and crime control. Criminological positivism and eugenics discourses set the tone for the modernization of criminal justice institutions and the implementation of new prison establishments. Concomitantly, in the wake of intense urbanization and the arrival of immigrant workers, hygienist practices became prevalent in larger cities, deeply troubling the living conditions of marginalized groups. The main concern of these policies was to establish an efficient system for managing the so-called underclass and instill a work ethic on a workforce transitioning from slavery to wage labor. Notwithstanding these developments in larger cities, the country’s hinterland was still subject to a traditional system of social control, under the rule of local landowners and threatened with the violence of armed outlaw groups. This paper seeks to unravel the contradictions between these two diverse settings and understand the importance of these distinct rationalities for the governance of crime during that period. It argues that these urban strategies, as modernization efforts driven by elite groups, incrementally displaced traditional forms of social control and constituted the antecedents of the contemporary technologies of governing social marginality.

Author

• David S. Fonseca, New York University