From the Panopticon to the Anti-Panopticon in San Pedro Prison (La Paz-Bolivia): Toward a Changing Model of Prison and Surveillance?

• In Event: Precariedad y mundos carcelarios en América Latina I (Venezuela y Bolivia)

Abstract

Known as the “panopticon”, the San Pedro prison was inaugurated on March 14th, 1897. The structure was the realization of modern penal science, following the example of the most famous American and European penitentiaries at that time. A hundred years later, the “philanthropic” ideals regarding the rehabilitation of prisoners have disappeared along with the rationale of security, order and discipline that fostered San Pedro prison’s construction at the end of the XIX century.
Nowadays, a living area designed for 300 persons is occupied by 2,300 inmates. On the inside, the facility is almost unrecognizable as a prison. As in life on the outside, everything in San Pedro takes place under the totally indifferent eye of the State, laws and authorities whom, in practice, welcome the prisoners “resourcefulness” and the investment in real estate inside the jail to deal with growing numbers of new inmates.
This revealing case study, based on my research in San Pedro prison during 2006-2008 and April-May 2014, allows the following analysis to be made:

1) the impact of justice and sociopolitical factors responsible for transforming San Pedro from the “panopticon” to a de facto wide-open penitentiary system;
2) the characteristic of “self-governance” in San Pedro; and
3) How this form of internal organization conforms to a new concept of surveillance based on a sort of “anti-panopticon” in which official authorities’ “don’t want to see”.

To shed light on the paradox of San Pedro jail in Bolivia means to make this facility less peculiar and isolated and more integrated with an emergent penal system, a “de facto” penitentiary policy using a model in which the Foucault’s “regard” is completely displaced to create a new, efficient and really affordable mechanism of discipline and punishment, which enables an understanding of the anti-panopticon essence both in many modern Latin American prisons and beyond.

Author

• Francesca Cerbini