Article

Imprisonment and
internment: Comparing
penal institutions North
and South

Punishment & Society

13(3) 307332
! The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1462474511404320
pun.sagepub.com

Christopher Birkbeck
University of Salford, UK

Abstract
Recent references to the warehouse prison in the United States and the prision-deposito
in Latin America seem to indicate that penal confinement in the Western Hemisphere
has converged on a similar model. However, this article suggests otherwise. It contrasts
penal facilities in North America and Latin America in terms of six interrelated aspects:
regimentation; surveillance; isolation; supervision; accountability; and formalization.
Quantitatively, control in North American penal facilities is assiduous (unceasing, persistent and intrusive), while in Latin America it is perfunctory (sporadic, indifferent and
cursory). Qualitatively, North American penal facilities produce imprisonment (which
enacts penal intervention through confinement), while in Latin America they produce
internment (which enacts penal intervention through release). Closely entwined with
this qualitative difference are distinct practices of judicial involvement in sentencing and
penal supervision. Those practices, and the cultural and political factors that underpin
them, represent an interesting starting point for the explanation of the contrasting
nature of imprisonment and internment.
Keywords
imprisonment, internment, Latin America, North America, penal facilities

Introduction
In their introduction to a useful set of essays on criminal justice and political
cultures, Newburn and Sparks (2004: 3) comment on the increasing evidence of
certain forms of convergence in the languages and practices of crime control.

Corresponding author:
Christopher Birkbeck, University of Salford, Salford, M5 4WT, UK.
Email: c.h.birkbeck@salford.ac.uk

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

308

Punishment & Society 13(3)

A look at recent research and commentary on penality in the Americas would seem
to conrm this trend. For example, US scholars often use the term warehouse
when talking about prisons in that country (e.g. Fleisher, 1989; Irwin, 2004; Lynch,
2001; Robertson, 1997; Simon, 2000; Toch, 1985). In so doing, they invite us to
recognize that contemporary prisons in the USA do little more than provide secure
connement for sentenced oenders. In Latin America, penal facilities are similarly
perceived to emphasize connement and neglect treatment, and are often referred
to as depositos (warehouses) (e.g. Carrion, 2008; Neuman, 2004; Sozzo, 2008).
The use of equivalent terms for connement seems to imply that, in the penal
domain if nowhere else, convergence in the Americas is now complete. However,
such a notion is problematic in both a quantitative and qualitative sense. The
quantitative problem concerns the extent to which warehousing has emerged in
the penal institutions of either region (e.g. Listwan et al., 2008; Sozzo, 2008). The
qualitative problem concerns the degree to which the terms warehouse and deposito can be understood and used in the same way in their respective regions.
Addressing this latter question is the primary objective of the present article.
Melossi (2001: 405) points out the problem in working with supercial notions of
linguistic equivalence: the usage of identical words often obscures the degree to
which they are embedded in the dierent history of dierent places, as well as
being articulated through (partially) dierent discourses (see also Worrall, 2000). I
take this to mean, among other things, that terms which have cross-linguistic equivalence may conceal underlying dierences in content and context. In relation to the
specic focus of this article, I seek to show that warehouse and deposito may be apt
descriptors of their respective realities, but that they denote very dierent kinds of
institution and are embedded (to use Melossis term) in very dierent conceptions
of penal intervention. Whether or not the Americas are witnessing a convergence in
patterns of crime and social control, which is a matter that cannot be debated here,
the character of penal connement is still markedly dierent in each region.
I develop my analysis by comparing six interrelated aspects of penal facilities:
regimentation; surveillance; isolation; supervision; accountability; and formalization.
Collectively, they represent dimensions of control the heart of all penal projects. I
seek to show that the level of control is considerably higher in the North than the
South1 and that there is also a qualitative dierence in the character of connement.
While imprisonment, in the Foucauldian sense of spatially concentrated disciplinary technologies (Foucault, 1979), is still an apt descriptor of penal connement in
the North, internment is a better descriptor of connement in the South.
Assembling the material for such an analysis is a challenge because of the need
to construct a general description that is not distorted by excessive attention to
particular years or institutions. The challenge is also compounded by the unequal
volume and availability of material on penal connement in each region. Wealthy
societies (such as those in North America) produce more certied knowledge than
poorer ones (such as those in Latin America), whether through government agencies, universities or research organizations, and this generalization holds for penological studies as well. In what follows, I focus particularly on the United States

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

Birkbeck

309

and Venezuela, the two countries in the hemisphere that I know best, but where
possible I broaden the descriptions to Canada and to other Latin American
nations in order keep the comparison at the level of regions.
If comparative studies of penality are aligned according to the emphasis that they
place on similarities or dierences in institutional developments and procedures,
my analysis falls squarely in the latter category. And dierence, of course, invites
explanation, as evidenced by the small but growing body of studies in comparative
penology and by the calls to add to them (e.g. Garland, 2009; Jeerson, 2007; Lacey,
2006). Almost without exception, those studies have focused on sentencing and rates
of imprisonment in Western Europe and North America (e.g. Cavadino and Dignan,
2006; Downes, 1988; Tonry, 2004; Whitman, 2003; Zimring and Hawkins, 1991; but
see also Weiss and South, 1998). Their explanandum tends to be conceptualized as
tolerance or harshness and their explanatory frameworks too diverse and nely
wrought to be adequately summarized here incorporate political (e.g. Whitman,
2003; Zimring and Hawkins, 1991), legal (e.g. Downes, 1988) and cultural (e.g.
Garland, 2001; Melossi, 2001) variables.
In contrast to prior research, the present essay focuses not on punitiveness
(a normative property) but on regimes of penal connement (a social property).
Its comparative framework is not limited to wealthier societies, but also includes
poorer ones. Given these departures from what has gone before, I prefer to let the
description, albeit provisional, suggest a possible explanation. My hypothesis for
the existence of imprisonment in the North and internment in the South, briey
outlined in the nal section of this article, focuses on diering conceptions of penal
intervention. With imprisonment, penal intervention is enacted through connement; with internment, it is enacted through release. Closely entwined with these
alternative conceptions of intervention are dierent models of judicial involvement
in sentencing and penal supervision. This type of explanation, centred on the differing roles of the judiciary in each region, points immediately to the relevance of
comparative legal studies (e.g. Damaska, 1986) but also to the importance so well
illustrated by existing work in comparative penology of placing penal practices in
their social, political and cultural contexts (Garland, 2006; King and Maguire,
1994). Such extensive theoretical exploration would, however, be premature at
this stage: the assembly of comparative descriptive material is the rst necessity.

Physical arrangements in confinement: Regimentation,

surveillance, isolation
Regimentation
As used here, regimentation refers to the spatial organization of inmates. Such
organization is obviously relevant to the goals of the institution because it reects
and enables a particular kind of control. A key aspect of regimentation is classication an activity that has a long history in some penal systems (e.g. McCartney,
1933). In general, classication allows the grouping of like individuals in order to

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

310

Punishment & Society 13(3)

achieve some purpose. In penal facilities, key dimensions of classication are

reected in residential arrangements, whereby dierent classes of inmate inhabit
dierent spaces or buildings. Classication also aects patterns of movement
within the institution another important aspect of regimentation.
In North America, facilities for connement reect a systemic approach to organization. First, a basic distinction exists between jails (used for preventive detention
and short-term connement) and prisons. Second, individual prisons generally form
part of a classicatory system which encompasses both their role in relation to other
prisons in the same jurisdiction, and the characteristics and uses of their component
parts. The current organizing principle for classication is the level of security, and
the basic categories of facility are maximum, medium and minimum security.
What these terms mean is illustrated by the following description from the
North Carolina Department of Correction (NCDC, 2007):
Close security prisons typically are comprised of single cells and divided into cell blocks,
which may be in one building or multiple buildings. Cell doors are generally remotely
controlled from a secure control station . . . The perimeter barrier is designed with a
double fence with armed watch towers or armed roving patrols . . . Medium security
prisons typically are comprised of secure dormitories that provide housing for up to
fty inmates each . . . Each dormitory is locked at night with a correctional ocer providing direct supervision of the inmates and sleeping area . . . The prison usually has a
double fence perimeter with armed watch towers or armed roving patrols . . . Minimum
security prisons are comprised of non-secure dormitories which are routinely patrolled
by correctional ocers . . . The prison generally has a single perimeter fence which is
inspected on a regular basis, but has no armed watch towers or roving patrol.

Of course, the classication of inmates also requires its own facility (or unit within
a facility), where convicted oenders spend the rst weeks or months of their sentence and are assessed in terms of risks and needs. In addition, custodial sta
require a disciplinary unit in order to handle particularly troublesome inmates, usually known as the maximum security unit/facility (or supermax if the term maximum has already been applied to a lower security level). Once again, the North
Carolina Department of Correction (NCDC, 2007):
Maximum security units are comprised of cells with sliding doors that are remotely
operated from a secure control station . . . These units are utilized to conne the most
dangerous inmates who are a severe threat to public safety, correctional sta, and
other inmates. Inmates conned in a maximum security unit typically are in their cell
23 hours a day. During the other hour they may be allowed to shower and exercise in
the cell block or an exterior cage.

Freedom of movement within the facility is closely correlated with the security
level: at maximum security level, physical restraints are used when inmates are
moved and all inmates are escorted by custodial sta; medium security facilities

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

Birkbeck

311

may employ a pass system for inmates; while at minimum security facilities, control
on movement may be limited to certain spaces and times of the day.
In Latin America, the classication of dierent types of facility may exist on paper,
but much less so in practice. The distinction between jails and other penal facilities is
not so clear because physical arrangements do not correspond entirely with legal categories of inmate. Thus, the police have holding cells, but these rarely represent the
equivalent of the American jail. They are used for short-term detention during the
initial phases of the criminal case, but individuals on preventive detention are held in
larger facilities. By law, these larger facilities would approximate to the North
American jail, but in practice they are part of the prison system and used as such.
For example, in Venezuela, the Criminal Code (Venezuela, 1964, 2005) and the
penal laws (Venezuela, 1975, 2000) have for long distinguished between penitentiaries
(solitary connement, forced labour), prisons (group connement, voluntary labour),
penal colonies (for frontier regions) and judicial internment centres (for preventive
detention and sentences of up to one year). The materialization of this array of institutions required the construction of judicial internment centres in each state2 and the
construction of prisons, penitentiaries and penal colonies in selected sites around the
country to house oenders serving longer sentences. In practice, the resources for such
a system were never forthcoming, and as a result most states have one or other of these
types of facility, but only one. Thus, the ocially designated judicial internment centres not only house suspects in preventive detention and convicted oenders with
sentences of up to one year, but also house convicted oenders with longer sentences.
Likewise, the prisons and the penitentiaries house all categories of convicted oenders and also suspects in preventive detention. Moreover, the distinction between
prisons and penitentiaries is found only in their architectural characteristics and
not in their regimes. In a similar vein, Ecuador implemented a new law in 1982
which renamed penal institutions as Social Rehabilitation Centres and classied
them into maximum, medium and minimum security levels. However, this classication system was never implemented (lack of resources was cited as one
reason), and Today, there are 36 Centres of Social Rehabilitation in abominable physical condition, where classication is applied only in terms of sex (del Olmo, 1998: 128).
Colombia represents a slight exception to this trend because during the 1990s it
embarked on an ambitious programme for constructing new maximum security
facilities to house drug trackers and guerrilla leaders. However, these facilities
relied on both ideas and nancial aid from the United States and have a limited,
though high prole, presence in the countrys inventory of penal facilities (del Olmo,
1998; Toro Vanegas, 2007). As an exception, they prove the rule that most Latin
American governments are unable (or unwilling?) to construct penal facilities, even
in the face of quite high levels of overcrowding (Carranza, 2003).3
The distinction between preventive detention and the diverse types of secure
connement could still be maintained if facilities were internally divided into specialized units, but often this does not occur: oenders are located according to
other criteria, mainly social extraction or geographic region of origin (Aldana,
1972; Olivero, 1998). This results in a mixing of inmates by legal category (accused

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

312

Punishment & Society 13(3)

or convicted), sentence length and type of crime, which makes the population
within any facility far more heterogeneous than in North America.4 However,
the relative lack of dierentiation between facilities makes Latin American institutions far more homogeneous than their North American counterparts, most of
them approximating the latters medium security model.

Surveillance
Surveillance of inmates relies on the physical presence of custodial sta together with
any technological resources that are available to them. Table 1 shows the ratio of
inmates to sta in Canada, the United States and Latin American countries for which
data were available. Although these gures contain an unknown amount of internal
error springing from likely dierences in the methods for dening and counting sta,
the broad picture that emerges is one of higher numbers of inmates per sta member
in Latin America. In a detailed comparison of a US jail and a Venezuelan judicial
internment centre, Jordan (1996) found that the US facility had an average of one
custodial sta member for every ve inmates, while the Venezuelan facility had one
custodial sta member for every 17 inmates. In terms of custodial sta on the job at
any time, the ratios were 1:20/25 and 1:65, respectively.
As is to be expected, North American facilities also routinely incorporate
surveillance technology, particularly CCTV and metal detectors, in order to keep
an eye on what is going on. The trend for the future is well illustrated by a new
186-bed jail that was recently opened in New York State:
[T]he facilitys integrated electronic security system . . . included ve touchscreen control stations, three graphic panels, 260 controlled and monitored doors, 165 intercom
stations, 165 proximity readers and more than 110 cameras . . . With the installation of

Table 1. Ratios of inmates to staff, North and Latin America

Country

Year

Total number
of inmates

Total number
of staff

Number of
inmates/staff member

Canada
United States
Colombia
Costa Rica
Chile
Ecuador
El Salvador
Peru
Venezuela

2001a
2000b
2001c
2001d
2001a
2001a
2002a
2001a
2001a

35,166
1,305,253
53,156
11,152
34,717
7738
11,055
26,989
18,768

32,588
430,033
6390
2258
6614
1567
1303
4812
2703

1.1
3.0
8.3
4.9
5.2
4.9
8.4
5.6
6.9

Sources: aUnited Nations (2005); bBJS (2003); cCampo Vasquez and Vargas de Roa (2003); dRico (2003).

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

Birkbeck

313

[a] security electronics system, the facility is able to signicantly increase its inmate
monitoring capacity. The intuitive and scalable nature of the touchscreens, as well as
its ease of conguration enables a single corrections ocer to view the activity of 42
inmates at a time compared to the original capacity of 24. (Werner, 2006)

In addition, various inmate tracking systems have also been developed, based
on bracelets worn by inmates, and are gradually being installed in prisons and jails.
The publicity for one of these systems cites the following benets:
The RFID prison management system is intended to have a three-fold function. It
ensures inmates do not escape by issuing an alarm if the bracelet approaches the jail
perimeter; it reduces violence by allowing ocers to monitor who is congregating with
whom; and it allows for administrative functions such as tracking where an inmate is
when they are needed. (Swedberg, 2005)

Not surprisingly, in the less wealthy continent that is Latin America, technology
is almost entirely absent from penal facilities. With fewer custodial sta to man
them, Latin American penal institutions exercise a far lower level of surveillance
over their inmates than do correctional facilities in North America.

Isolation
The degree of isolation of inmates from society is governed by policies on visiting,
the use of telephones, the availability of televisions and so on. In this regard, an
interesting dierence emerges around visiting. In North America, the extent and
mode of visitation generally varies by the security level of the facility. Inmates in
maximum security facilities are only permitted non-contact visits (conducted in
booths with glass partitions and telephone intercoms), with greater restrictions on
the number of visitors and the length of time for which the visits can last. Inmates in
medium and minimum security facilities are allowed contact visits (in a supervised
visiting room or patio) from a greater number of visitors and for a greater period of
time. Family (conjugal) visits are also available to these inmates (e.g. CSC, 2007a).
The degree of control over visitors and visiting is quite strict. Inmates must
request approval of nominated visitors; visitors must comply with guidelines
regarding appropriate attire (Comfort, 2003); and behaviour in the visiting room
must minimize physical contact:
An inmate and his/her visitor(s) are allowed to briey embrace and kiss at the beginning and end of their visit. An inmate may hold his or her minor children . . . Holding
hands on top of the table in plain view is permitted, with no other physical contact.
Excessive contact, (kissing, massaging, stroking, and sitting with legs intertwined or
sitting on laps) could result in termination of the visit. (CDCR, 2007: 9)

This, at least, is the mandate from the authorities.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

314

Punishment & Society 13(3)

Visiting policy in Latin American facilities is much more permissive. Typically,

one or two days per week are designated for visits and on these days the friends and
family of all inmates except those in administrative or disciplinary segregation are
allowed in to the facility. Sta do not keep lists of authorized visitors, but anyone
wishing to enter the facility must know the name of a person held there, must
produce identication, must comply with a minimum dress code and must be
willing to be searched. The visiting period generally lasts from four to six hours
and there is usually no designated visiting area, nor direct supervision of visitors
and inmates. In Brazil, for example:
Few penal facilities have special areas for visits; instead, visitors are often allowed to
enter directly into prisoners living areas. In some prisons, such as Sao Paulos Casa de
Detencao, social visits with family and friends take place in the courtyard, while
wives and girlfriends are allowed to enter prisoners cells. (HRW, 1998: 115)

Conjugal visits are also permitted for most inmates, on a relatively frequent
basis, and independent of marital status (Olivero, 1998). In some cases, prostitutes
may go into the facility on pre-arranged appointments with inmates (HRW, 1997,
1998).
All observers agree that visiting days transform penal institutions in Latin
America. Thus, MacNeil (2006: 9495) on a Venezuelan facility:
After three days in prison, I experienced my rst visit day. The atmosphere of the
prison was completely transformed as women and children streamed in to the compound, laden with bags of groceries, and the whole place took on a gala atmosphere
for a few hours.

And Olivero (1998: 104) reports an analogous situation in Mexico: In some

facilities, entire families are allowed to live for extended periods behind prison walls
with their loved ones. It is common for children to be seen running and playing
throughout Mexican prisons. In Bolivia, too, many facilities have families living in
with the inmates (Pinto Quintanilla, 2007).
While visits clearly reect the importance of family in Latin American countries
and provide welcome relief from the boredom and violence of institutional life, it is
their character as open days that I wish to emphasize here. Once or twice weekly,
the institution becomes an arena for mingling with visitors which draws in almost
all of the inmates whether or not someone goes specically to visit them (an inmate
can meet the visitors of companions, or even sell snacks and handicrafts to the
assembled throng). This represents a signicant weakening of the social isolation
that would otherwise prevail. In addition, the relative freedom given to inmates and
visitors to do what they like, where they like, is a considerable departure from the
close control that is typically associated with penal facilities in North America and
constitutes a visible acknowledgement that the interior of each facility belongs to
the inmates, not the authorities.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

Birkbeck

315

Social arrangements: Supervision, accountability,

formalization
Supervision
Penal institutions are a clear example of Gomans (1991 [1961]) assertion that in
total institutions there is a basic division between a large managed group of inmates
and a small supervisory sta. But these institutions can vary in the extent to which
the inmates are managed by the supervisory sta and the extent to which they
manage themselves.
In North America, the last 70 years have seen a marked decline in inmate participation in running the facility (Jacobs, 1977; Marquart and Crouch, 1984, 1985).
Nowadays, participation by inmates in administrative or custodial matters is rarely
(if ever) countenanced and instead tends to be conned to programme development
and management (e.g. D az-Cotto, 1996). Even here, the possibilities may be limited: using DiIulios tripartite typology of managerial styles (control, responsibility,
consensual), Reisig (1998) found that only two out of 11 state facilities surveyed in
the United States corresponded to the responsibility model (which gives inmates a
greater voice in institutional aairs).
One result of the trend to exclude them from administrative and custodial procedures is a greater levelling of inmates, because there are fewer positions from
which to garner power or inuence. Although gangs represent an important mode
of social organization among contemporary inmates (Gaes et al., 2002), and in
some respects reproduce the hierarchies and styles of control shown by the old
convict-guards and building tenders, unlike the latter they are not sponsored by the
facilitys administration and are therefore seen as a far less suitable mechanism
for internal governance. Thus, the attitude of the custodial sta towards gangs
may range from strictly adversarial to cautiously tolerant, but never to wholesale
acceptance. Absent the possibility of the formal incorporation of inmates into the
structure of internal control, administrations appear to have responded in a variety
of ways: increasing the number of custodial sta; increasing the restrictions and
control on the movements of inmates; increasing surveillance; seeking a balance of
power between gangs; or simply turning a blind eye to all but the most egregious
disorder.
In Latin America, the use of some kind of building tender appears to be widespread and longstanding. For example, Aldana (1972: 54) described the Delegado de
Pabellon (Dormitory Delegate) in the Catia Judicial Internment Facility (Caracas)
where he served time (an inmate whom the authorities recognise as having good
behaviour and the capacity to exercise internal control over each dormitory), as did
Bayer (1978) the jefes de patio o pasillo (heads of patio or corridor) at about the same
time in a Bogota facility. More recently, Human Rights Watch (HRW, 1997) found
that the dormitory delegates in Catia Prison were being called polipresos (inmate
police); Pinto Quintanilla (2007) described the prisoner Delegate Councils in
Bolivia; and MacNeil (2006) found a well-entrenched system of inmate control in
Venezuelas Western General Penitentiary.5

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

316

Punishment & Society 13(3)

MacNeil, however, had previously been in a Venezuelan facility where there was
no strategic alliance between the prison sta and the inmates, nor any attempt to
replace that form of control with a more permanent and intrusive presence on the
part of the administration. The custodial sta limited themselves to controlling
certain doors and railings, to trying to impose some kind of order on the lines
that formed at meal times and to the evacuation of inmates who were ill, injured or
dead. Human Rights Watch found a similar situation in some Brazilian prisons.
For example, at the Joao Chaves Penitentiary in Natal, with an inmate population
of 646, only three guards were on duty while the organization was visiting: [T]he
three guards remained stationed at a table near the entrance of the prison. During a
day at the facility, we rarely saw them get up from the table to monitor the situation of the inmate population (HRW, 1998: 71).
When custodial sta give up any attempt at internal control, relations between
prisoners can quickly descend into internecine warfare (Hidalgo and Jordan, 1993
1994), with truces only for visiting days. This is the more problematic form of
prisoner self-government, built on anarchy rather than authority.6 Throughout
Latin America these two styles of internal governance ebb and ow, providing a
striking contrast to the structure of power in the North.

Accountability
As a result of relatively recent historical developments, North American prisons
currently nd themselves accountable to a broad range of institutions and groups.
Since the 1960s, inmates and prisoners rights groups in the United States have
successfully used litigation to seek redress for the inhumane treatment of inmates
and the arbitrary nature of decisions regarding key aspects of the penal trajectory,
such as, good time, furloughs and parole (Feeley and Rubin, 1999; Feeley and
Swearingen, 2004; Jacobs, 1980). Judicial responses have not only materialized in
decisions that are often favourable to inmates, but also in the active involvement of
the courts in the oversight of prison reform. In Canada, government-appointed
commissions of inquiry have performed something of a similar role, their creation
often triggered by crises in the correctional system and their reports lled with
criticisms of the inhumane and arbitrary treatment of prisoners and with proposals
for reform (Gaucher and Lowman, 1998). Collectively, the activities in the US
courts and the Canadian commissions of inquiry reect a trend to include prisoners as members of mass society with many of the same rights as other citizens
(Jacobs, 1977).
A second set of external observers comprises the general public and elected
politicians who, concerned by rising crime rates from the 1960s onwards, have
often developed strategic alliances to demand punishment rather than welfare
and treatment for oenders (Garland, 2001). This trend is generally acknowledged
to be stronger in the United States (Melossi and Lettiere, 1998) than in Canada
(Moore and Hannah-Moatt, 2005) and, insofar as it has aected penal facilities,
has arguably led to a greater concern for security (understood as the attempt to

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

Birkbeck

317

limit problem behaviours among inmates). The conuence of these external

demands on penal control is neatly reected in the Correctional Service of
Canadas slogan Safety, Respect and Dignity for All (CSC, 2007b) and has
led to a self-conscious attempt to achieve a balance (Meyer and OMalley, 2005)
between what many see as potentially conicting objectives. However, one result
has been that the principle of less eligibility, which in the penal domain mandates
worse material conditions for inmates than for the poorest members of society, has
been somewhat attenuated.7
Latin America has experienced a similar punitive turn to that in the North but
there has not been the counter-trend towards more humanitarian connement.
Rapid increases in crime rates since the late 1980s have not necessarily translated
directly into expanding prison populations, but they have fuelled historically high
levels of concern about crime and personal safety (Caldeira, 2000; Rotker, 2000)
which have led to calls for mano dura (a strong hand) (Godoy, 2005). They have
also been an important stimulus to self-help in crime prevention as communities
gate themselves o, harden property targets and hire varying types of watchmen
and security personnel. Attitudes towards oenders have also hardened (BricenoLeon et al., 2006) and self-help in criminal justice has spilled over into execution,
either as spontaneous lynching (Godoy, 2006) or the more organized death squads
(Huggins and Mesquita, 1995; Perea, 2003). In this social climate, the prospects for
examining what goes on in penal facilities and for improving the inmates lot are
quite bleak.
Latin American penal facilities have always attracted their share of moral crusaders, whether they be wealthy philanthropists (Aguirre, 2005), religious groups
(Miller, 1998), academics (e.g. Cordova, 1999) or, more recently, human rights
groups (e.g. HRW, 1997, 1998). These have done much to publicize and criticize
conditions inside. Inmates themselves have also drawn attention to the conditions of
connement through letters, the occasional book and, most frequently, protests and
strikes. However, these initiatives have not been sucient to produce a sustained
shift in the position of penal facilities, or inmates, vis-a`-vis the rest of society. One
barrier has been the relative lack of inmates organizations and of the articulation of
their problems: the typical inmate has little education or social capital. This situation
only changes when political gures are conned in these facilities, because they have
a peculiar motivation and the necessary discursive skills to publicize penal ills
(Aguirre, 2005; del Olmo, 1998). Occasionally, a government takes it upon itself to
proclaim a new condition for inmates, as did the populist Peron government in 1950s
Argentina (Caimari, 2004), but such changes have rarely gone beyond rhetoric and
have lasted only as long as the corresponding political regime.
Another barrier to the humanitarian movement has been the unwillingness of
the courts to get involved with conditions within the facilities. This is striking
because the courts have for long held the legislatively assigned responsibility of
periodically inspecting all penal facilities (Sanchez Galindo, 2004), although they
have rarely complied with this directive (e.g. Saavedra, 1977).8 The response to the
penal crisis in Latin America has been an attempt to lower the use of preventive

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

318

Punishment & Society 13(3)

detention through reforms to criminal procedure (Tocora, 2005; Vogler, 2005),

rather than to deal with the problems of penal facilities themselves. In Latin
America, these facilities continue to be much less open to scrutiny than their counterparts in North America.

Formalization
In North America, accountability has accentuated the trend in correctional bureaucracy towards the development of codied rules and the use of written documentation as part of a culture of audit and control (Feeley and Swearingen, 2004;
Riveland, 1999). A brief look at the websites of correctional administrations or
of accessory bodies concerned with standards conrms this. For example, the
Correctional Service of Canada has nearly 140 Commissioners Directives and
nine Standard Operating Practices (CSC, 2007c); and the United States Federal
Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has more than 280 policy documents (BOP, 2007). The
latter deal with such varied matters as the acceptance of donations, incentive
awards for employees, inmate grooming and furniture testing. The avour of
this style of administration is well captured in a recent statement by the Director
of the BOP to the Prison Commission:
Beyond externally-mandated oversight, the Bureau is a policy-driven agency with
numerous built-in mechanisms of critical self-review and management
control . . . The primary system of control in the Bureau of Prisons is the program
review process . . . [An example] from the Food Services institution guidelines [is] provided below:
. Review documentation over the past 6 months to determine if job eciency
lectures (monthly safety talks) are being conducted and topics include
instruction on job specic equipment, hazardous materials, safety, and sanitation procedures.
. Determine through direct observation if safety procedures are established
and there is proper use of all protective safety equipment (where applicable)
in the inmate work area (e.g. machine guarding, eye protection, safety shoes,
re extinguishers charged and functional, and eye wash stations operable).
(Lappin, 2006: 57)

The meaning of this comparatively new administrative style for corrections personnel is direct and obvious:
Its a new day. When I rst started with the department, there was very little documentation. If you locked an inmate up, you verbally reported that to the captain
on duty. You did not write a report at that particular time like we do
now . . . In the old days, you had what you referred to as a guidebook. Now we
manage by standards and policies. We are not allowed mistakes. Its important that

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

Birkbeck

319

ocers stay on top of the rules and regulations. Its important they stay on top of the
standard operating procedures and its important they stay on top of the administrative memos that come out from the department, the division or the wardens oce.
(Beck, 2005: 2)

This managerial style is absent in Latin American penal facilities, where policy is
largely legislated. Most countries have a basic penal law which is complemented by
a few sets of legislated regulations and by the occasional ministerial decree. For
example, Argentina has ve sets of regulations that accompany its Organic Law of
the Federal Penitentiary Service (SPFA, 2007), while Colombia which has been
more diligent in this regard has at least 40 presidential or ministerial decrees that
develop or modify the basic Ley 65 de 1993 (see INPEC, 2007). Neither these nor
other countries approach the level of codication or administrative control found
in North America.
Legislative guidelines, sometimes dubbed as bright and shiny,9 coexist with a
preference for verbal orders and control within penal facilities (Jordan, 1996).
Administration is based heavily on inertia and institutional tradition while documentation is relatively scarce. Two consequences ow from this. The rst is that
relatively little information is routinely collected about these facilities, further
underlining their opacity to the public gaze. In extreme situations, there may not
even be an accurate count of the number of inmates in the facility (e.g. Hidalgo and
Jordan, 19931994). The second is that the specication and control of operating
procedures may be tenuous, such that wardens have a lot of autonomy and outcomes can be quite varied. The development and codication of rules usually promotes a universalistic ethos in bureaucracies, and where this does not occur
particularism may be quite strong. Evidence of the latter is seen in the reproduction
within the Latin American penal facilities of the social inequalities found in wider
society, a feature commented on by numerous observers who compare the relatively comfortable quarters of the wealthy inmates with the squalid dormitory areas
inhabited by the poor (Bayer, 1978; Bretas, 1996; Olivero, 1998).10

Imprisonment and internment

Looking across the various institutional dimensions reviewed in this essay, we nd
a relatively clear set of dierences between North America and Latin America. In
the North, inmates are more regimented, more isolated and subject to greater
surveillance; they are also less involved in the running of the institution. North
American penal facilities are more open to external scrutiny and their bureaucracies are more formalized. In Latin America, inmates are less regimented, less isolated and subject to less surveillance; they are also more involved in the running of
the institution. Latin American penal facilities are less open to external scrutiny
and their bureaucracies are less formalized.
One way to express these contrasts quantitatively is as a dierence in the level
of control: in North America, control is assiduous in the sense that it is unceasing,

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

320

Punishment & Society 13(3)

persistent and intrusive; in Latin America, control is perfunctory in the sense that it
is sporadic, indierent and cursory. But another way to express these contrasts
qualitatively is in terms of the character of connement: in North America there
is imprisonment; in Latin America there is internment.
Despite the lengthy historical existence of the word prison, there is much of value
in Foucaults (1979: 233) point that, since the late 18th century, the prison is to be
dierentiated from detention because it also involves the technical transformation of
individuals: [t]he margin by which the prison exceeds detention is lled . . . by techniques of a disciplinary type. In other words, the prison is an institution in which
individuals are not merely detained, but disciplined through projects, improvements,
experiments, theoretical statements, personal evidence and investigations (Foucault,
1979: 235). It does not matter that what is being done has changed over time, from
reform to rehabilitation (Rothman, 1995) to punishment (Feeley and Simon, 1992); it
does not even matter that the technical transformations fail to materialize (as evidenced by the periodic and persistent pronouncements on the failure of prisons).
Even when imprisonment is reduced to nothing more than control, it is still more
than detention: Inmates do not control anything inside the walls. Everything is
structured in accordance with strict policy and procedure (Bruton, 2004: 41). In
all of this, imprisonment is conceived as a project, as an act of social engineering.
It may be possible to transform criminals through rehabilitation or treatment; but
even when not, it is still possible to organize facilities and people in a rational,
planned and calculated manner to reduce disorder, danger and risk (Feeley and
Simon, 1992). In Irwins (2004: 80, emphasis in the original) characterization of
the contemporary warehouse prison: the routine . . . is not brutal, dangerous, or
excessively cruel. It is tightly controlled, limited, monotonous, and lacking in opportunities for self-improvement.
Scholars who study the history of penal institutions in Latin America have
provided some valuable insights into the emergence and spread of ideas regarding
penitentiaries, prisons and the rehabilitative ideal as social and political projects
(Aguirre, 2005; del Olmo, 1981; Salvatore and Aguirre, 1996a). In these studies, we
nd ample evidence of experts, commentators and reformers who, in the best tradition of social engineering, articulated visions of the prison as a site for the technical transformation of oenders. Most drew heavily on international sources but
also incorporated local, more idiosyncratic, perspectives. However, there is also
equally ample evidence that these visions were either never realized or only short
lived (see particularly, Aguirre, 2005; Salvatore and Aguirre, 1996b; SantiagoValles, 1996). For reasons that require exploration, the margin by which these
regimes went beyond detention, that is, became a prison in Foucaults terms,
was either small or non-existent. The information presented here suggests that
this state of aairs still persists today.11
When detention is the sole objective, penal intervention is limited to a spatial
policy of connement. What happens inside penal facilities is strictly irrelevant and
concern only arises when inmates escape. Control focuses on containment rather
than internal organization and activity. This is the paradigm of internment, which

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

Birkbeck

321

materialized to a greater or lesser degree in forms as diverse as the pre-modern

English jail (McConville, 1998), US prisoner of war camps (Glidden, 1973) and
relocation centres (Hayashi, 2004; Starn, 1986), and other concentration camps the
world over (Applebaum, 2001; Walston, 1997). For the observer familiar with
contemporary Latin American penal facilities, the literature on internment
oers many points of resonance: makeshift and relatively harsh conditions;
inmate self-government; inmate unrest; and the overwhelming focus on containment. By contrast, for the same observer, the literature on North American prisons
is as likely to stimulate a sense of dierence from Latin American penal facilities as
it is to generate a perception of similarity.

Conclusion imprisonment, internment and the

role of the judiciary
In seeking to understand these dierent regimes, the key to any explanation for
their separate occurrences must focus on the presence (imprisonment) or absence
(internment) of projects for doing something with or to inmates while in connement, whether it is rehabilitation, punishment, treatment or caring. Viewing the
task in this light immediately indicates that certain sorts of explanation are invalid
or unhelpful. Thus, we cannot explain imprisonment and internment by the presence or absence in wider society of projects for penal connement, because research
attests to the ready availability of such projects across the hemisphere, both historically (e.g. Rothman, 1971; Salvatore and Aguirre, 1996a) and currently (Feeley
and Simon, 1992; OLP, 2007; Rico, 1997: 269291). Nor should we cast the explanation in terms of resource disparities, as if the wealthier North American societies
have had the resources to implement penal projects while the poorer Latin
American societies have not. Disciplinary projects (in the Foucauldian sense)
depend much more on social organization than they do on economic resources
and material technology.
We should also be wary of explanations built on normative perspectives that,
implicitly or explicitly, view internment simply as a failure to produce and sustain
imprisonment. The modernization agenda of earlier Latin American reformers
and academics (Salvatore and Aguirre, 1996a) and the currently fashionable critical
stances that portray the regions prisons in terms of deciencies, problems and the
failure to live up to legislative prescriptions (OLP, 2007) all point to explanations
that ultimately rest on some notion of state capability in the North and incapability
in the South. The problem with this kind of explanation is that it ranges imprisonment and internment along a scale rather than treating them as qualitatively
distinct categories. In so doing, it precludes the signicant possibility that each type
of connement regime combines with other penal practices to produce a particular
form of criminal justice.
Viewed in isolation, internment looks like an empty and meaningless container
a simple holding action. And that may be all there is to it, at least in cases where

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

322

Punishment & Society 13(3)

inmates are subsequently to be expelled from society (through deportation or

death), or in which problematic social events such as wars (that generate the
need to conne groups such as aliens and captives) have well-dened and structurally important conclusions (peace). But most crime is not dealt with by deportation
or death, and criminality (as an attribute ascribed to oenders) does not have a
clearly dened end. Therefore, holding criminals by internment inevitably raises the
question of how and when they will be released. It means that the heart of penal
social control lies in the journey back to society, not in the time away from it.
Whereas imprisonment enacts penal intervention through connement, internment
enacts it through release.
I will focus briey on several aspects of the criminal justice system in the United
States and Venezuela that t with the preceding characterization. First, penal connement in the United States is a sentencing option, and its use is determined by
criteria of appropriateness, such as criminal history and seriousness of the current
oence. In fact, currently, about 30 per cent of US convicted oenders are not
sentenced to prison at all, but to probation (mostly) and other non-connement
sanctions (BJS, 2007). By contrast, in Venezuela penal connement is prescribed
for all felony convictions and there is no possibility of sentencing to probation
(Venezuela, 2005). All convicted oenders therefore begin their sentence in a penal
facility; probation must be applied for by inmates and is treated as a type of early
release mechanism.
Second, the mechanisms for early release from penal connement are fewer in the
United States than in Venezuela and restricted to the nal segment of the prison
sentence. Thus, in the United States work release and halfway house programmes,
when not used as an initial sentencing option, are only available to inmates within
four to six months of their release date (e.g. Knapp and Burke, 1992; Savage and
Dumovich, 1991). Discretionary parole, in many ways a progressive step down from
minimum security connement, has declined markedly in the face of mandatory
parole, which simply adds a phase of penal supervision to an already completed
prison sentence (Petersilia, 1999). In Venezuela, work release is available after a
quarter of the sentence has been completed, halfway houses after a third, conditional
release after two-thirds, and connement12 after three-quarters. In addition, presidential pardons can be granted to inmates who have completed two-thirds of their
sentence (Ministerio de Justicia, 1997; Venezuela 2005, 2006). Given this array of
mechanisms, inmates naturally tend to focus more on getting out of connement
than they do on getting through it (Birkbeck and Perez Santiago, 2006).
Third, criteria for awarding total or partial release from connement tend to
look backwards in the United States and forwards in Venezuela. In the United
States, decisions concerning release are based mainly on criminal history and the
instant oence and partly on in-prison performance, the latter envisaged as what
has been done to make sure this criminal is no longer a danger before he is released
(Petersilia, 1999: 481). In Venezuela, decisions are based mainly on projected
arrangements for conventional living (family support, the oer of employment)
following release (e.g. Birkbeck, 2007, 2009) and in the oft-cited words

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

Birkbeck

323

from the Penitentiary Law are concerned with concepts of social responsibility
and coexistence and the will to live according to the law (Venezuela, 2000:
Article 7).
Fourth, release decisions in the United States are in the hands of prison administrators and parole boards and are routinized through the use of computer systems
(that deduct good time, monitor and ag up time served, etc.) and through predictive instruments that indicate the probability of recidivism. In Venezuela, all
release decisions except presidential pardons are taken by judges. Judicial control
over release and presidential control over pardons not only reect the importance
assigned to these decisions but also frame them as matters of justice (however
dened) rather than of management.
The attempt to explain the existence of imprisonment in the North and internment
in the South might protably begin with this latter dierence. In the United States,
judicial involvement in criminal cases usually ends with the act of sentencing and
convicted oenders are handed over to prison and parole bureaucracies to serve out
their terms.13 The administrative uncoupling of sentencing from penal supervision
which arguably emerged 200 years ago has undoubtedly been an important stimulus to the growth of those bureaucracies and to the penal projects that they have
envisaged or adopted. In Venezuela, judicial involvement in criminal cases is a constant:14 even the release from connement after serving a completed sentence requires
a judicial order. Judicial authority over the penal trajectory creates enduring links
between judges and convicted oenders, which the latter must seek to cultivate and
exploit if they are to regain their freedom (Birkbeck and Perez Santiago, 2006).
Given this fundamental relation, those who sta the penal bureaucracy are merely
custodians for the judicial system and they generally know it. For convicted oenders (and arguably also for those held in preventive detention), the content and
meaning of criminal justice is essentially supplied by the judges remote and often
inaccessible gures who vary from ecient to indolent, honest to corrupt, but who
control all penal destinies. This dierence between North and South suggests that a
plausible explanation of imprisonment and internment could emerge from further
study of the roles of the judiciary in sentencing and penal supervision, and of the
cultural and political processes that underpin those roles.15
Acknowledgements
This article was written for the University of Floridas programme on Crime, Law and
Governance in the Americas. My thanks to Michael Welch, Odilza Lines and colleagues
at the University of Florida for comments on an earlier version of this essay.

Notes
1. North and South are used as abbreviations for North America and Latin America.
2. Criminal law and criminal justice (with the exception of some police agencies) are
organized nationally. Within this framework, each state constitutes a judicial circuit.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

324

Punishment & Society 13(3)

3. According to figures presented by Carranza (2003), the average level of overcrowding (prison population as a percentage of rated capacity) in Latin America was 147
per cent in 1999. This compares with the following situation in the United States: 134
per cent for federal facilities, 101 per cent for state facilities, 89 per cent for private
facilities (BJS, 2003) and 93 per cent for jails (BJS, 2001). In Canada, a recent
government report observed that in many jurisdictions, the number of incarcerated
adults has reached the levels of institutional capacity in recent years (Juristat, 2006:
19), therein suggesting that overcrowding has not been a recent problem, although it
may become so.
4. One consequence is the existence of a large number of prisoners without sentence
(Carranza et al., 1983) or punishment before trial (HRW, 1997), which has been of
so much concern to penal reformers in Latin America.
5. We were introduced to the cabo, or head man in the letra [dormitory], and began to
understand a little about how the prison was organised. There was the usual management team of hard men who ran the prison, but they, together with everyone
else in the prisoners organisation, played a dual role. To the prisoners, they were
the gremio, or management, and were the law within the prison, holding the power
of life and death over prisoners. . . To the prison authorities, though, they were
known as the prisoners committee, and met regularly with the prison director
and other officials to organise sports competitions, cultural events, educational
courses and other aspects of prison life. (MacNeil, 2006:200; cf. Marquart and
Crouch, 1985)
6. When warring factions of inmates are not kept apart, a considerable number of deaths
can occur, as for example at the Sabaneta National Prison in Maracaibo, Venezuela,
where more than 100 inmates were killed in one day of internal conflict in January
1994 (HRW, 1994). Typically, this style of inmate self-government and conflict is also
accompanied by military containment and re-take strategies on the part of the authorities, which are prime opportunities for state brutality. The most egregious example
was the retaking of the Carandiru prison in Sao Paulo, Brazil, after a riot in October
1992, during which 111 inmates were killed (HRW, 1998).
7. When the demand for greater punitiveness has been particularly vocal, some of
the frills of institutional life (the weight room, TVs and so on) may disappear
for a while (Riveland, 1999). However, there is little doubt that the material conditions of life in North American facilities are now above those experienced by the
poorest segments of society: Prison staff must deliver services and programs to an
increasingly diversified inmate population. Staff must be sensitive to the lighting,
caloric intake of inmates, food temperature, recreational needs, cell size and population density, racial and ethnic composition of offender living areas and cells, disciplinary requirements and personal security, health care, mail and correspondence
needs, hygiene needs, and a host of other issues on a daily and hourly basis
(Marquart, 2005: 6).
8. However, there are isolated cases of judges ordering the closure of individual facilities, for example in Brazil (HRW, 1998: 19) and Venezuela (Mart nez,
19931994).

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

Birkbeck

325

9. These [penal] codes have been referred to as bright and shiny, which is a polite
way of saying that they are seldom, if ever, used in so far as the practice in the
prisons is concerned (Teeters, 1946: 24).
10. The organization of life within Mexican prisons is a mirror image of life in
Mexican society. That is to say that there are clear class and economic distinctions.
Those who can afford the quality amenities of life can purchase them (Olivero,
1998: 103).
11. del Olmo (2002: 377) posits that contemporary Latin American penal facilities
fall into three categories: (1) the prison-ghetto, which looks like a very poor urban
settlement and where inmates are self-governing and have much contact with family
members and the world outside prison (e.g. in Bolivia, Mexico); (2) the prison-concentration camp, characterized by high levels of violence perpetrated by inmates and
prison personnel, inmate self-government and very poor infrastructure (e.g.
Venezuela, Brazil); (3) the prison hotel, occupied mainly by wealthier inmates.
12. Confinement (confinamiento) dates at least from the Criminal Code of 1915 and
requires the person to reside in a municipality designated by the court and to report
periodically to the parish Prefect.
13. The most important exceptions are the recently developed reentry courts (based
on the drug court model) which move the court into a sentence management
role, overseeing the convicted persons eventual return to the community (Maruna
and LeBel, 2003: 92).
14. This contrasts with judicial oversight of penal facilities which, although mandated
by law (Venezuela, 1962, 2006), is rarely exercised.
15. One place to begin (but not end) this kind of exploration in North America would
be to look at therapeutic jurisprudence (e.g. Wexler, 2001; Winick and Wexler,
2003) and the sometimes heated reactions that it produces (Hoffman, 2002).
In Latin America, extensive discussion of jueces de vigilancia, or jueces de ejecucion
(sentence oversight judges) (e.g. Sanchez Galindo, n.d.) tends to focus on their
potential role as prison ombudsmen rather than their role as penal case supervisors.
This latter role seems to be so taken for granted that it escapes comment among
those who research criminal law and criminal justice.

References
Aguirre C (2005) The Criminals of Lima and Their Worlds: The Prison Experience,
18501935. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Aldana JS (1972) Reten de Catia. Caracas: Editorial Fuentes.
Applebaum A (2001) A history of horror. New York Review of Books 48(16). Available
at: http://www.anneapplebaum.com/communism/2001/10_18_nyrb_horror.html.
Bayer T (1978) Gancho Ciego: 365 Noches y una Misa en la Carcel Modelo. Medell n:
Ediciones Hombre Nuevo.
Beck T (2005) The 2005 Correctional Officer: New Roles, New Inmates, New Challenges.
Presented to the Commission on Safety and Abuse in Americas Prisons on November

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

326

Punishment & Society 13(3)

12, 2005, St. Louis, Missouri. New York: Vera Institute of Justice, Commission on
Safety and Abuse in Americas Prisons.
Birkbeck C (2007) Variables associated with probation outcomes in Venezuela.
In: Deosaran R (ed.) Crime, Delinquency and Justice: A Caribbean Reader.
Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randall Publishers, 348367.
Birkbeck C (2009) El funcionamiento de la libertad condicional: Un estudio de caso de
la Region Andina de Venezuela, 19812004. Revista Cenipec 28: 2967.
Birkbeck C and Perez Santiago N (2006) The character of penal control in Latin
America: Sentence remissions in a Venezuelan prison. Criminology and Criminal
Justice 6(3): 289308.
BJS (Bureau of Justice Statistics) (2001) Census of Jails, 1999. NCJ 186663.
Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
BJS (Bureau of Justice Statistics) (2003) Census of State and Federal Correctional
Facilities, 2000. NCJ 198272. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
BJS (Bureau of Justice Statistics) (2007) Felony Sentences in State Courts, 2004. NCJ
215646. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
BOP (Bureau of Prisons) (2007) Policy Documents. Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of
Prisons.
Bretas ML (1996) What the eyes cant see: Stories from Rio de Janeiros prisons.
In: Salvatore R and Aguirre C (eds) The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin
America. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 101122.
Briceno-Leon R, Camardiel A and Avila O (2006) Attitudes toward the right to kill in
Latin American culture. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 22(4): 303323.
Bruton WJH (2004) The Big House: Life Inside a Supermax Security Prison. Stillwater,
MN: Voyageur Press.
Caimari L (2004) Apenas un Delincuente: Crimen, Castigo y Cultura en la Argentina,
18801955. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.
Caldeira TPR (2000) City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paulo.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Campo Vasquez R and Vargas de Roa RM (2003) World Factbook of Criminal Justice
Systems: Republic of Colombia. NCJ 199271. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice
Statistics.
Carranza E (2003) Poltica Penal y Penitenciaria en America Latina y el Caribe. Bogota:
Universidad Libre de Bogota/Instituto Latinoamericano de las Naciones Unidas
para la Prevencion del Delito y Tratamiento del Delincuente. Available at: http://
www.bibliojuridica.org/libros/4/1727/6.pdf.
Carranza E, Houed M, Mora LP and Zaffaroni ER (1983) El Preso sin Condena en
America Latina y el Caribe. San Jose, Costa Rica: ILANUD.
Carrion FM (2008) La carcel: Del Extranamiento a la Inclusion. Quito: FLACSO.
Cavadino M and Dignan J (2006) Penal Systems: A Comparative Approach. London:
Sage.
CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) (2007) Inmate
Visiting Guidelines. Sacramento, CA: California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

Birkbeck

327

Comfort ML (2003) In the Tube at San Quentin: The secondary prisonization of

women visiting inmates. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 32(1): 77107.
Cordova TL (1999) Sabaneta: La Casa donde Crecen las Sombras. Maracaibo:
Universidad del Zulia.
CSC (Correctional Service of Canada) (2007a) Private Family Visiting. Cat. No. PS841/2004. Ottawa, Canada: Correctional Service of Canada.
CSC (Correctional Service of Canada) (2007b) Home Page. Ottawa, Canada:
Correctional Service of Canada. Available at: http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/.
CSC (Correctional Service of Canada) (2007c) Policy and Legislation. Ottawa, Canada:
Correctional Service of Canada.
Damaska M (1986) The Faces of Justice and State Authority. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
del Olmo R (1981) America Latina y su Criminologa. Mexico: Siglo XXI.
del Olmo R (1998) The state of prisons and prisoners in four countries of the Andean
Region. In: Weiss RP and South N (eds) Comparing Prison Systems: Toward a
Comparative International Penology. Amsterdam: Gordon & Breach, 115139.
del Olmo R (2002) Por que el actual silencio carcelario? In: Briceno-Leon R (ed.)
Violencia, Sociedad y Justicia en America Latina. Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 369381.
D az-Cotto J (1996) Gender, Ethnicity and the State: Latina and Latino Prison Politics.
Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Downes D (1988) Contrasts in Tolerance: Post-War Penal Policy in The Netherlands and
England and Wales. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Feeley MM and Rubin EL (1999) Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State: How
the Courts Reformed Americas Prisons. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Feeley MM and Simon J (1992) The New Penology: Notes on the Emerging Strategy of
Corrections and Its Implications. Criminology 30(4): 449474.
Feeley MM and Swearingen V (2004) The prison conditions cases and the bureaucratization of American corrections: Influences, impacts and implications. Pace Law
Review 24(2): 433475.
Fleisher MS (1989) Warehousing Violence. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Foucault M (1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Peregrine.
Gaes GG, Wallace S, Gilman E, Klein-Saffran J and Suppa S (2002) The influence of
prison gang affiliation on violence and other prison misconduct. Prison Journal
82(3): 359385.
Garland D (2001) The Culture of Control. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Garland D (2006) Concepts of culture in the sociology of punishment. Theoretical
Criminology 10(4): 419447.
Garland D (2009) A culturalist theory of punishment? Punishment and Society 11(2):
259268.
Gaucher B and Lowman J (1998) Canadian prisons. In: Weiss RP and South N (eds)
Comparing Prison Systems: Toward a Comparative International Penology.
Amsterdam: Gordon & Breach, 6197.
Glidden WB (1973) Internment camps in America, 19171920. Military Affairs 37(4):
137141.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

328

Punishment & Society 13(3)

Godoy AS (2005) Converging on the Poles: Contemporary punishment and democracy

in hemispheric perspective. Law and Social Inquiry 30(3): 515548.
Godoy AS (2006) Popular Injustice: Violence, Community and Law in Latin America.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Goffman E (1991 [1961]) Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and
Other Inmates. London: Pelican.
Hayashi BM (2004) Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hidalgo R and Jordan M (19931994) Amotinamientos carcelarios: De los cambios
administrativos a la ruptura del control (Sabaneta, Enero de 1994). Revista Cenipec
15: 125142.
Hoffman MB (2002) Therapeutic jurisprudence, neo-rehabilitationism, and judicial
collectivism: The least dangerous branch becomes the most dangerous. Fordham
Urban Law Journal 29: 20632098.
HRW (Human Rights Watch) (1994) Prison Massacre in Maracaibo. Publication No.
B601. Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch.
HRW (Human Rights Watch) (1997) Punishment before Trial: Prison Conditions in
Venezuela. New York: Human Rights Watch.
HRW (Human Rights Watch) (1998) Behind Bars in Brazil. New York: Human Rights
Watch.
Huggins MK and Mesquita MP (1995) Scapegoating outsiders: The murders of street
youth in modern Brazil. Policing and Society 5(4): 265280.
INPEC (Instituto Nacional Penitenciario y Carcelario) (2007) Normas. Bogota:
Instituto Nacional Penitenciario y Carcelario.
Irwin J (2004) The Warehouse Prison: Disposal of the New Dangerous Class. Los
Angeles, CA: Roxbury Publishing.
Jacobs JB (1977) Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.
Jacobs JB (1980) The prisoners rights movement and its impacts, 19601980. Crime
and Justice 2: 429470.
Jefferson AW (2007) Prison officer training and practice in Nigeria. Punishment and
Society 9(3): 253269.
Jordan M (1996) Objetivos institucionales, definicion de roles y procesos de comunicacion: Una comparacion entre las carceles de Merida, Venezuela y Albuquerque, New
Mexico, USA. In: Gabaldon LG and Birkbeck C (eds) Control Social y Justicia
Penal en Venezuela. Merida, Venezuela: Universidad de Los Andes, 259291.
Juristat (Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics) (2006) Adult correctional services
in Canada, 2004/2005. Statistics Canada Catalogue No. 85-002-XIE, Vol. 26
No. 5.
King R and Maguire M (1994) Contexts of imprisonment: An international perspective.
British Journal of Criminology 34(5): 113.
Knapp K and Burke P (1992) Residential Community Corrections Facilities: Current
Practice and Policy Issues. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, National
Institute of Corrections.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

Birkbeck

329

Lacey N (2006) Historicizing contrasts in tolerance. In: Newburn T and Rock P (eds)
The Politics of Crime Control: Essays in Honour of David Downes. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 197226.
Lappin H (2006) Statement of Harley G. Lappin, Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons,
before the Commission on Safety and Abuse in Americas Prisons. Presented on
February 9, 2006, Los Angeles, California. New York: Vera Institute of Justice,
Commission on Safety and Abuse in Americas Prisons.
Listwan SJ, Jonson CL, Cullen FT and Latessa EJ (2008) Cracks in the penal
harm movement: Evidence from the field. Criminology and Public Policy 7(3):
423465.
Lynch M (2001) From the punitive city to the gated community: Security and
segregation across the social and penal landscape. Miami Law Review 56(1):
601623.
MacNeil D (2006) Journey to Hell: Inside the Worlds Most Violent Prison System.
Preston, UK: Milo Books.
Marquart J (2005) The American Correctional Environment and Prison Officers.
Presented to the Commission on Safety and Abuse in Americas Prisons, November
12 2005, Saint Louis, Missouri. New York: Vera Institute of Justice, Commission
on Safety and Abuse in Americas Prisons.
Marquart J and Crouch B (1984) Coopting the kept: Using inmates for social control in
a Southern prison. Justice Quarterly 4(1): 491509.
Marquart J and Crouch B (1985) Judicial reform and prisoner control: The
impact of Ruiz v. Estelle on a Texas penitentiary. Law and Society Review 19(4):
557586.
Mart nez JF (19931994) Un caso de amparo penitenciario. Revista Cenipec 15: 6596.
Maruna S and LeBel TP (2003) Welcome home? Examining the reentry court from a
strengths-based perspective. Western Criminology Review 4(2): 91107.
McCartney JL (1933) Classification of prisoners. Psychiatric Quarterly 7(3):
369377.
McConville S (1998) Local justice: The jail. In: Morris N and Rothman DJ (eds) The
Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 266294.
Melossi D (2001) The cultural embeddedness of social control: Reflections on the comparison of Italian and North-American cultures concerning punishment. Theoretical
Criminology 5(4): 403424.
Melossi D and Lettiere M (1998) Punishment in the American democracy: The paradoxes of good intentions. In: Weiss RP and South N (eds) Comparing Prison
Systems: Toward a Comparative International Penology. Amsterdam: Gordon &
Breach, 2159.
Meyer J and OMalley P (2005) Missing the punitive turn? Canadian criminal justice,
balance, and penal modernism. In: Pratt J, Brown D, Brown M and Hallsworth S
(eds) The New Punitiveness: Trends, Theories, Perspectives. Cullompton, UK: Willan
Publishing, 201217.
Miller D (1998) The Lord of Bellavista. London: Triangle.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

330

Punishment & Society 13(3)

Ministerio de Justicia (1997) Instructivo para la Tramitacion de las Formulas de

Cumplimiento de Penas Pautadas en la Ley de Regimen Penitenciario e Indulto
Presidencial. Caracas: Ministerio de Justicia.
Moore D and Hannah-Moffatt K (2005) The liberal veil: Revisiting Canadian penality.
In: Pratt J, Brown D, Brown M and Hallsworth S (eds) The New Punitiveness:
Trends, Theories, Perspectives. Cullompton, UK: Willan Publishing, 85100.
NCDC (North Carolina Department of Correction) (2007) Assigning Inmates to Prison.
Available at: http://www.doc.state.nc.us/dop/custody.htm.
Neuman E (2004) La prision como control social en el neoliberalismo. Memoria del
Congreso Internacional de Cultura y Sistemas Jurdicos Comparados. Mexico:
Universidad Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), 115141.
Newburn T and Sparks R (eds) (2004) Criminal Justice and Political Cultures.
Cullompton, UK: Willan Publishing.
Olivero JM (1998) The crisis in Mexican prisons: The impact of the United States.
In: Weiss RP and South N (eds) Comparing Prison Systems: Toward a
Comparative International Penology. Amsterdam: Gordon & Breach, 99113.
OLP (Observatorio Latinamericano de Prisiones) (ed.) (2007) A la Sombra de la
Sociedad: Situacion Penitenciaria en Latinoamerica. Caracas: Observatorio
Venezolano de Prisiones.
Perea CM (2003) El territorio es sagrado: Pandillas y guerras del pavimento en
Colombia. In: Llorente MV and Rubio M (eds) Elementos para una Criminologa
Local: Polticas de Prevencion del Crimen y la Violencia en Ambitos Urbanos. Bogota:
Alcald a Mayor, Secretar a de Gobierno, 355375.
Petersilia J (1999) Parole and prisoner reentry in the United States. Crime and Justice
26: 479529.
Pinto Quintanilla JC (2007) Bolivia: Desde la carcel, democratizar el pa s. In: Observatorio
Latinoamericano de Prisiones (ed.) A la Sombra de la Sociedad: Situacion Penitenciaria
en Latinoamerica. Caracas: Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones, 83107.
Reisig MD (1998) Rates of disorder in higher-custody state prisons: A comparative
analysis of managerial practices. Crime and Delinquency 44(2): 229244.
Rico JM (1997) Justicia Penal y Transicion Democratica en America Latina. Mexico:
Siglo XXI.
Rico JM (2003) Costa Rica. In: World Factbook of Criminal Justice Systems. NCJ
199273. Washington: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Available at: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.
gov/content/pub/ascii/wfcjscr.txt.
Riveland C (1999) Prison management trends, 19752025. Crime and Justice 26:
163203.
Robertson J (1997) Houses of the dead: Warehouse prisons, paradigm change and the
Supreme Court. Houston Law Review 34: 10031063.
Rothman DJ (1971) The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New
Republic. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company.
Rothman DJ (1995) Perfecting the prison: United States, 17891965. In: Morris N and
Rothman DJ (eds) The Oxford History of the Prison. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 117150.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

Birkbeck

331

Rotker S (ed.) (2000) Ciudadanas del Miedo. Caracas: Editorial Nueva Sociedad.
Saavedra E (1977) Informe sobre la visita mensual de funcionarios a las carceles distritales. Revista Prisiones, Segunda Epoca, No. 3, diciembre.
Salvatore R and Aguirre C (eds) (1996a) The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America.
Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Salvatore R and Aguirre C (1996b) The birth of the penitentiary in Latin America: Toward
an interpretive social history of prisons. In: Salvatore R and Aguirre C (eds) The Birth
of the Penitentiary in Latin America. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 143.
Sanchez Galindo A (2004) El juez de vigilancia en el derecho comparado. Memoria del
Congreso Internacional de Cultura y Sistemas Jurdicos Comparados. Mexico:
Universidad Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), 153177.
Sanchez Galindo A (n.d.) La Judicializacion de la Administracion de Prisiones. Available
at: http://www.bibliojuridica.org/libros/4/1628/19.pdf.
Santiago-Valles KA (1996) Forcing them to work and punishing whoever resisted:
Servile labor and penal servitude under colonialism in nineteenth century Puerto
Rico. In: Salvatore R and Aguirre C (eds) The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin
America. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 123168.
Savage DA and Dumovich M (1991) NIC Focus: Community Residential Programs.
Washington, DC: National Institute of Corrections.
Simon J (2000) From the big house to the warehouse: Rethinking prisons and state
government in the 20th Century. Punishment and Society 2(2): 213234.
Sozzo M (2008) Populismo punitivo, proyecto normalizador, y prision-deposito en
Argentina. Jura Gentium. Revista de Filosofa del Derecho Internacional y de la
Poltica Global IV(1). Available at: http://www.juragentium.unifi.it/es/surveys/
latina/sozzo/index.htm.
SPFA (Sistema Penitenciario Federal Argentino) (2007) Legislacion. Buenos Aires,
Argentina: Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos. Available at: http://
www.spf.gov.ar/FramePPal/Legislacion/Newlegislacion.htm.
Starn O (1986) Engineering internment: Anthropologists and the War Relocation
Authority. American Ethnologist 13(4): 700720.
Swedberg C (2005) LA County Jail to track inmates. RFID Journal, 16 May. Available
at: http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1601/1/1/.
Teeters NG (1946) Penology from Panama to Cape Horn. Philadelphia, PA: University
of Pennsylvania Press/Temple University Press.
Toch H (1985) Warehouses for people? Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science 478: 5872.
Tocora F (2005) La reforma procesal penal en America Latina. Captulo Criminologico
33(4): 445468.
Tonry M (2004) Punishment and Politics: Evidence and Emulation in the Making of
English Crime Control Policy. Cullompton, UK: Willan Publishing.
Toro Vanegas JD (2007) Situacion carcelaria en Colombia. In: Observatorio
Latinoamericano de Prisiones (ed.) A la Sombra de la Sociedad: Situacion
Penitenciaria en Latinoamerica. Caracas: Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones,
133137.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016

332

Punishment & Society 13(3)

United Nations (2005) The Eighth United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the
Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (20012002). New York: United Nations.
Available at: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/crime_cicp_survey_eighth.html.
Venezuela (1962) Codigo de Enjuiciamiento Criminal. Gaceta Oficial (Caracas) No.
748, Extraordinario.
Venezuela (1964) Codigo Penal. Gaceta Oficial (Caracas) No. 915, Extraordinario.
Venezuela (1975) Reglamento de Internados Judiciales. Gaceta Oficial (Caracas)
No. 30.784.
Venezuela (2000) Ley de Regimen Penitenciario. Gaceta Oficial (Caracas) No. 36.975.
Venezuela (2005) Codigo Penal. Gaceta Oficial (Caracas) No. 5.768, Extraordinario.
Venezuela (2006) Codigo Organico Procesal Penal. Gaceta Oficial (Caracas) No.
38.536.
Vogler R (2005) A World View of Criminal Justice. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
Walston J (1997) History and memory of the Italian concentration camps. Historical
Journal 40(1): 169183.
Weiss R and South N (eds) (1998) Comparing Prison Systems. Amsterdam: Gordon &
Breach.
Werner T (2006) Modern Lockdown. Security Products November 2006:22. Available
at: http://www.secprodonline.com/articles/41647/
Wexler D (2001) Robes and rehabilitation: How judges can help offenders. Court
Review 38(1): 1823.
Whitman J (2003) Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide between
America and Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Winick B and Wexler D (2003) Judging in a Therapeutic Key: Therapeutic Jurisprudence
and the Courts. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Worrall A (2000) Globalization, the millennium and prison. Theoretical Criminology
4(3): 391397.
Zimring F and Hawkins G (1991) The Scale of Imprisonment. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.

Christopher Birkbeck is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Salford,

UK, and an Emeritus Professor of Criminology at the Universidad de Los Andes,
Venezuela.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on July 27, 2016