"State of the art" session: Imprisonment changes in Latin America: Northern theories and southern politics and states

PAUL HATHAZY

Viena

Congreso; 3rd. ISA Forum of Sociology; 2016

International Sociological Association

In this Keynote speaker "State of the art" session presentation I discuss theories about contemporary prison expansion in South America and propose elements for an explanation in political-institutional terms. I discuss the changes in incarceration rates in dialogue with Michael Tonry who synthesizes the debate on factors impacting on the use of prison punishment in the Global North, distinguishing between risk factors related to their increase and protective factors associated with their reduction. Taking the risk or protective factors as conjunctural mechanisms that could operate through several cases, I first discuss the explanatory power of the mechanisms proposed by Tonry to capture the realities of Latin American cases. In a second part I identify alternative causal mechanisms linked to changes in the political system and transformations in the police and judicial sector of the penal state of several South American countries in recent decades.