Citizenship Regimes in Brazilian Prisons: Hybrid, Unjust and Weak

By Jean Daudelin and  José Luiz Ratton 

For Brazilian inmates, prisons are mostly spaces of rights denial, above and beyond their formal condemnations. Most, nonetheless, still enjoy some rights. This paper examines the modalities of allocation and the range of those rights. It understands citizenship as a bundle of rights whose scope and quality are determined by the terms of the bargains through which those rights are allocated. These bundles, together with the governance arrangements that define and enforce them are in turn understood as citizenship regimes. The paper examines three regimes that are common in male Brazilian prisons: one regime that is fully controlled by the state, and two that are hybrid, involving both state authorities and, in one instance, criminal organizations (factions), and in the other, chosen inmates (keyholders or chaveiros) who are vested of governance authority by prison administrators. The overall system they conform is a composite of state and non-state rights enforcement arrangements. The allocation of rights it produces is deeply unequal. And the range and quality of the rights enjoyed by the vast majority of inmates is narrow and poor. Keywords: Citizenship regimes, rights, criminal organizations, prisons, Brazil. 

EUROPEAN REVIEW OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES, No. 116 (2023): July-December, pp. 127-144