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This study, based on Marxian theory, aims to fill an existing gap in discussions on modern slavery, i.e., the role of the state in institutionalized slavery. We analyze how the participation of the state in social relations, which has built and permeates the penal system, has transformed part of the working class, mostly composed of young and Black people that previously were part of the reserve army of labor, into an imprisoned reserve army of labor, allowing it to be exploited under conditions akin to slavery. We used the method of historical materialism to understand the essence of social relations that we observed over an eight-month period using on-site (in loco) research in seventeen prison units in the state of Minas Gerais and semi-structured interviews. Our analysis allowed us to grasp the expression of the working class overcoming common moral sense, as it is irrelevant whether industrial activities are legal or illegal from the perspective of value and capital accumulation. The difference lies in the particularity of Brazilian capitalist development, which imposed on Black people an intense process of impoverishment due to their initial exclusion from the processes of capitalist exploitation, determining a place for this population with numerous obstacles to the sale of their workforce in the sectors developed under capitalism and in unequal conditions of pay. In this way, with the development of Brazilian capitalism, we see the historical constitution of a predominantly Black stagnant superpopulation, in which the maximum amount paid for their working time is the minimum wage, incorporated by the State into slave labor in prison, especially from the political of rehabilitation and private management1 of the prison system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Travestis and transgender women have increased vulnerabilities when in prison, where they face constant violations of their basic rights to life. The study analyzed the use and ways of obtaining material gender technologies for this population in the prison system of Rio de Janeiro. A census survey was carried out with 138 interviewees, between April and June 2021. The results revealed high percentages of young adults, black, of mixed race, and with low education. Despite the dif- ficulties in obtaining and using these technologies, a better scenario was revealed when compared with other national studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article maps the creation, describes the functions and actions of the special groups of the Brazilian prison police. Initially established in Rio de Janeiro for prison control their practices resemble those of the Military Police battalions of the same state. This police "specialty" spreads across Brazilian states with the replication of regulations and training of the old groups. Such a network articulates the different special groups of the prison system, which use warfare practices under justification of containing factions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prison crisis in Ecuador shocked national and international public opinion. There are several attributed causes, but the problem of prison overpopulation has played a key role. Thus, the objective of this research is to discuss dilemmas and structural challenges of criminal policy in that country to relieve overcrowding in the prison system. The dilemma of increasing crime, the management of the judicial system, the prison infrastructure management model and the definition of a preventive drug policy are examined as the most complex nodal points. The resolution of these issues may offer a way out of the current crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reveals the functionality of the entrepreneurial ideology present in the political formulation of access to work in prison. It is understood that this type of work also suffers the impacts of the new morphology of work. It is argued that mass incarceration is a result of the penal state. It also considers that access to penal labor policies in prison is constituted by contradictions and expropriations of a neoliberal nature. The study concludes that access minimizes the life of the individual deprived of liberty and hides the expropriations that interest capital, thus evidencing the neoliberal logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to outline preliminary considerations regarding reports produced by social workers to the Technical Classification Commissions (CTC) in Rio de Janeiro. From a sample of 25 processes in the criminal execution phase, we scrutinized their narratives conceiving such documents as part of an invisible path of the disciplinary process of prisons and as a labyrinth that conditions the intramural technical movements to paths preconceived by the system itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographic research and document analysis, the article analyzes the implementation of electronic monitoring of offenders in Maranhão during the years following the massacres at the Pedrinhas Penitentiary Complex. Statistical data on the growth of the Maranhão prison population and the development of monitoring programs between 2014 and 2018 are also mobilized. The text recovers Chico de Oliveira's concept of "platypus" to describe the coupling between the old and the new, the archaic and the modern, the filthy and the aseptic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of remission of penalty by reading: discourses and practices seek to present the policy of remission of penalty by reading in the state of Santa Catarina, through interviews with coordinators responsible for these initiatives in two prison units. They decide on the procedures taken, the operational dynamic, and select the books and evaluation criteria. In addition to bringing together and comparing the two projects of reference through reading, the work proposes to investigate the moral intentions and the ends envisaged and achieved in the coordinators' speeches. As a result, it was identified that there are still no systematized data on the recidivism of participants in penalty remission projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the interactions between the public and private sectors in the process of increasingly endowing the Brazilian penal system with security technologies in the wake of a series of prison rebellions led by the "criminal group" Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). By discussing the discourses and rationales mobilized by politicians, legislators and businessmen within the scope of the Congressional Inquiry of the prison system established in 2008, the article shows that the growing presence of private capital into the Brazilian criminal justice system activates the technical and discursive connections between cost-effective surveillance and violent repression as the main strategies for prison management in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between Care and Custody: How Prison Officers Perceive Their Work in Minas Gerais reveals how prison officers in Minas Gerais perceive their work, whether it is focused on guaranteeing order or on care--a word traditionally associated with resocialization activities in prison. We analyzed whether the workers' sex has any influence on how they perceive their work, through the analysis of 1,525 online questionnaires self-administered between 2014 and 2015, and semi-structured interviews carried out with 10 women and 13 men working in prisons between 2016 and 2018. In their perception, the maintenance of order and security is the main objective of the profession. The similarities of the discourses of women and men indicate the adoption of masculinity values, such as the use of force and brutality, seen as essential to maintain order in the prison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bad Victims: An Approach to the Perspectives and Experiences of Criminal Women aims is to explore concrete experiences of delinquent women, based on gender and violence as intertwined analytical dimensions. The qualitative study is based on interviews with three women released from Buenos Aires (Argentina) prison system, with different criminal trajectories. The testimonies show, on the one hand, how their income in this masculinized environment destabilized their gender self-perceptions and, on the other, how the advance of drug trafficking and anti-drug policies produced a young, deprofessionalized and generically "disempowered" female subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "ERRATA" published in the journal Dilemas: Journal of Conflict Studies and Social Control, presents a correction regarding a previous article entitled "Malas víctimas: Un acercamiento a las perspectivas y experiencias de mujeres delincuentes" (Bad victims: An approach to the perspectives and experiences of female offenders). The correction clarifies that the objective of the study is to understand the stories of women who define themselves as "criminals" and emphasize the victimizing construction of femininity. Interviews were conducted with women who were released from the prison system in Buenos Aires, with different criminal trajectories, and the results show that these women compete for recognition in a masculinized and "stratified" environment according to gender. Being criminals gives them prestige in other social contexts and favors their perception as "empowered" women. [Extracted from the article]