Making and managing masculinities in the Brazilian prison system

• In Event: Gangs, Prison Governance, Gender & 'Rehabilitation' in Latin America - 2 of 2

Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which various ‘masculinities’ are performed, shaped and managed within the diverse spaces, and among the diverse actors, of the Brazilian prison system. These spaces include the different types of prison regimes and penal facilities: from super-max, to the high security and remand units, to factory prisons, specialised units (for sex offenders) and semi-open and community-assisted prisons. The actors range from the universe of prisoners, to prisoner organisations (ranging from the infamous comandos to neo-pentecostal groups), to the prison guards (including police officers), judicial actors insistent on handing down custodial orders or sentences, and civil society actors active in the penal environment. The paper explores the central paradox that whilst the Brazilian state incarcerates those whose ‘masculinity’ it fears, it then proceeds to produce and disseminate a hyper-masculinity among the prison population. Whilst this is hardly unique to Brazil, the paper examines the micro and macro specificities of the Brazilian context, on the one hand the intersection of race, class and gender in the spaces and among the actors alluded to, and, on the other, the political environment of a hardening penal discourse that is maintaining Brazil’s upward trajectory on mass incarceration, whilst it is falling elsewhere.

Author

• Fiona J Macaulay, University of Bradford