Latin American prisons throughout history. From a region without penitentiaries to a mass imprisonment area

LUIS GABRIEL GONZÁLEZ ALVO

Oxford

Congreso; Second International Conference Punishment in Global Peripheries; 2022

Oxford University

In this presentation we will address the process by means of which Latin American (LA) countries turned from countries without penitentiaries to one of the main mass incarceration areas (in terrible accommodating conditions) in the world in a little over a century. First, we shall present the prevalence of the colonial legal culture in the period prior to the regional integration into the global market. Economic growth, based on exporting economies was determining to the consolidation of LA states, process in which the building of prisons was an important part. In the layout of penitentiary projects, the influence of the North became evident in two predominant trends, Atlantic and Pacific. At the same time, we will point out the importance of South-South exchanges through regional influences: ideas, discourses, models and patterns were exchanged in relation to the different levels of geographical and cultural proximity. In the second section we will analyze the construction of the first radial penitentiaries in the capitals and the confinement premises in the “interior” of the countries. The concerns derived from the unbalanced development in imprisonment institutions between the center-capital and the periphery-interior are suggested (1850-1920). The coding processes as changing tool in the penitentiary discourse and practices are presented. In terms of architecture, the shift from the radial architectural pattern to the parallel one during the first years of the 20th century and the creation of the first centralized penitentiary administrations (1920-1950). In the third section, the processes of building of the legal systems of criminal execution, the part played by the United Nations and the military dictatorships (1950-1990). Already in democratic government, the ascent of a new punitive movement (neopunitivism) which led LA to develop the greatest growth in incarceration rate in the world in the 21st century.