Book Review: Prisons, Inmates and Governance in Latin America by Máximo Sozzo (ed.)
| Published date | 01 November 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806231196374 |
| Author | Ignacio González-Sánchez |
| Date | 01 November 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
References
NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) (2022) Prison statistics of India. Available at: https://ncrb.
gov.in/en/node/3724 (accessed 28 July 2023).
Pollack S (2012) An imprisoning gaze: Practices of gendered, racialized and epistemic violence.
International Review of Victimology 19(1): 103–114.
Ross R and Fabiano E (1986) Female Offenders: Correctional Afterthoughts. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland.
Máximo Sozzo (ed.), Prisons, Inmates and Governance in Latin America, Palgrave Macmillan: Cham,
2022; 411 pp.: 9783030986018, EUR 119.99 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Ignacio González-Sánchez, Universitat de Girona, Spain
This book offers a rich compilation of works on prison confinement in various Latin
American countries. More importantly, the volume showcases coherence and uniformity
in the type of analysis and discussion—something that is increasingly difficult to find in
edited collections. The book, in part, presents itself as an exploration of contexts of confine-
ment in the Global South, thus joining a series of recent works that point towards an opening
up of the field and somerelaxation in the levelof Anglocentrism. Equally noteworthy is the
book’s commitment to a comparative approach between different countries in the region and
between models of the Global North and the Global South. In this way, inmate governance
in prisons in the Global South is given the importance it deserves. These forms of prison
organization can no longer be seen as an anomaly or a sign of the State’s failure to
control prisons; instead, they are better understood as a different way of gove rning a
prison. Indeed, it is important to note this book is one of the editor’s many efforts to establish
comparative discussions between different models of prison confinement in Latin America
and to enhance our ability to think beyond the categories produced in other contexts (see, for
example, Carrington et al., 2019; Melossi et al., 2011; Sozzo, 2016).
The main goal of the book is to reflect on the different ways of organizing life in a
prison. In contrast to the usual view from a legal perspective, the book focuses on the
regimes in which inmates participate in prison management. This can be analysed in dif-
ferent ways, but here it is discussed mainly in terms of inmate governance or
co-governance (different authors in the books explain their different choices). The reflec-
tion is done through the presentation of successive empirical studies, mainly anchored in
qualitative approaches, such as ethnographies and interviews. Among the various reasons
for paying attention to the phenomenon of prison co-management is its rapid expansion
over the last three decades and the presence of high levels of informality that prove crucial
for the maintenance of a formal order.
The book is structured in three parts. The first part, ‘Emergence and transformations’,
consists of three chapters that adopt a historical perspective. In a very interesting text,
Dias, Salla and Alvarez analyse two different political and institutional contexts in
Brazilian history to compare two experiences of inmate governance—one led by prison-
ers and the other promoted from above. Ariza and Iturralde, for the Colombian context,
explore the retreat of the state in Escobar’s prison, La Catedral, and argue that the
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