Da repressão aos vadios ao encarceramento em massa na atualidade: um estudo sobre trabalho e sistema prisional brasileiro

Abstract

The present study seeks to analyze crucial points of the Brazilian socio-historical formation, in order to reveal how these particularities impacted the constitution of the country's society and reflected in the formation of the labor market and the Brazilian prison system. The path set out aims to demonstrate that those historically excluded from the productive system, marginalized in territorial terms and criminalized by the capitalist system continue to be the same as they were centuries ago, marked by a certain color and social class: black and “vagrants”. In this context, punishment presents itself as a social practice of control and coercion of the subaltern population, reproducing the core of the capitalist mode of production – class society –, since the Brazilian prison system does not reintegrate, but rather reinforces the asymmetries of a society with slave roots. Racism, structural unemployment and drug trafficking present themselves as determining factors that drive a fateful feature of Brazilian reality: mass incarceration, especially of black and poor people. Data will be presented to confirm this scenario. Furthermore, the aim is to denounce the contradictions of the criminal system and the violation of Human Rights within Brazil's prison institutions.