INSTITUIÇÃO E PODER: visões do interior de uma penitenciária

Abstract

This thesis investigates how power is installed, structured, organized and maintained among individuals serving a prison term in a correctional facility in the State of Goiás. For this purpose, the paper prioritizes the analysis of the psychological and social processes implicated in structuring the mechanisms of power in the context of such a facility. This investigation was developed by means of an exploratory survey, comprised of predominantly qualitative procedures, such as interviews and observations, complemented by document research. Facility managers, agents and administrative workers were interviewed in an informal setting. Five individuals serving prison terms were also interviewed. The semi-structured interviews used a previously tested script created on the basis of categories whose purpose was to understand process mediations involved in constituting and structuring power. After analyzing the interviews, observations and documents it is possible to conclude that there is a multi-determined and many times secrete process at play for constituting and structuring power in a correctional facility, within the context of the relationships established among inmates. Such a process presents itself, mostly, as both natural and necessary. Power is structured around inmates, based on the individual characteristics of each inmate in this institutional context; and also around other human resources, more connected to the administrative and functional structure of the correctional facility, reproducing a constitutional logic of power, very close in nature to that developed by inmates. Therefore, one can not speak of a power, which is single and exclusive, but of micro powers, which subject everyone and are exercised constantly and uninterruptedly, thereby acquiring unique characteristics, according to the organization dynamics of life within a correctional facility.