Prisons in SÃo Paulo in the first half of the 19th century: Social demands, actors and contradictions

Abstract

This paper analyses the speeches on the prison demand throughout the 19th century in the official records of the City Council of São Paulo, in the reports of the inspection commissions and in the periodicals of the students of the Largo de São Francisco Law School. The contradiction between the ideal modern prison and its reality in the city of São Paulo – considered as a decadent institution because it does not perform its manifest role — shows the same disconnection/paradox between the modern political thinking and the Brazilian slave-owning reality. Even in theory, the “regenerative” prison could be suggested only in a juridically free society; on the other hand, São Paulo’s prisons, exposed as cruel and inhumane, were the socially legitimate, necessary institutions in a slave-owning society.