Negotiating freedoms: Re-education and prisoner governance in Nicaragua

• In Event: Gangs, Prison Governance, Gender & 'Rehabilitation' in Latin America - 1 of 2

Abstract

Contrary to the regional 'punitive trend' and in spite of this increase in incarceration, the Nicaraguan penitentiary law makes ‘re-education’ mandatory. Inmate participation in re-educational programs, ranging from schooling to church and cultural activities, is often rewarded with sentence reduction. But, contrary to what this re-educational system and its promise of sentence reduction would have us believe, daily life in the Nicaraguan penitentiary system is very much governed through (the threat of) violence. Violent prison initiation rituals, coupled with strongly gendered codes of conduct, regular stabbings and the negotiations of basic activities (such as eating and personal hygiene) in a crowded, deteriorated and under-surveilled environment all pose possible threats to the inmates physical integrity. In this way, even though the distribution of prisoner privileges is organized by the prison authorities, inside their multi-person cells, on their ‘own’ time, inmates mostly govern each other through the regulation of violence and goods (including food stuff, clothing and basic necessities). In order to survive in prison, prisoners must then not only learn to adequately perform ‘changed attitudes’ toward the prison authorities, but also learn to negotiate their place in the prison hierarchy through violence from the get-go. Many inmates deploy their personal (gang) history to this end. In this paper I will explore different prisoner trajectories and argue that individual freedoms, both within and outside prison, are conquered by those inmates who excel in navigating this complex web of prison power relations.

Author

• Julienne Weegels, Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation CEDLA