Um campo religioso prisional: estado, religiões e religiosidades nos cárceres a partir do contexto juizforano

Abstract

While some experts have announced the end of religions, they remain very present, including in the public sphere. The interactions built with the State or with each other, including the participation of its supporters, translate processes and characteristic elements in each context. Given this scenario, the purpose of this research is to understand how religions operate and how they establish themselves in incarceration environments, which are unique due to their own rules and values, not experienced in the culture set outside prison walls. The research combines a bibliographic review – there are factors such as laity, secularization, state regulation and imprisonment – and ethnography – carried out in the Ariosvaldo Campos Pires Prison, in the mining town of Juiz de Fora –, indicating how religious perceptions and experiences are produced, reproduced and established in prisons. This contribution allows the evaluation of specific dynamics, pointing out the senses and meanings assigned by those involved with the chaplaincy in places intended for people to serve sentences. Such dynamics are in conformity with the Brazilian religious prison field.