Movement between and beyond walls: Retro-alimentation between São Paulo’s Prisoner’s Movement ‘PCC’ and the Prison System

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

Abstract

The First Command of the Capital (PCC) first appeared as a type of prisoner’s collective in the early 1990s, and is present in the majority of penal institutions and urban areas within the State of São Paulo today. The PCC has commonly been referred to as ‘the biggest prison gang’, yet I approach it as a “movement”. I argue that there are no restrictions of what or who can move with the PCC and, consequently, of what can constitute it. Following this approach, I have been researching all that can constitute the PCC. This allowed me to see how the PCC is co-produced through the exercise of justice, security operations, current laws, public policies, and of what is written about it. Both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ are then not so evident. Even if one considers the penal institutions as the center of the PCC, and if one considers never to be more within the state than when inside a prison, the proposed approach offers a perspective that neither puts the PCC at the margins of state or as something that arises in the ‘absence’ of the state. On the contrary, this approach enables us to describe how detainees – PCC members – put in movement administrative actions and prison policies, and how their movement in turn is productive of changes both in the management of prisons and public security.

Author

• Karina Biondi, Universidade Estadual de Campinas