The body of the convicted. Prison and violence in latin america

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the meaning and scope of prison violence in Latin American. We show how physical violence is a central part of the prison experience in the region. On the one hand, death appears as an extreme manifestation of prison violence. On the other, there is the daily harshness of violent relationships within the prisons, physical injury, and subjection to subhuman conditions of confinement. These approaches to punishing the bodies of the convicted coexist with an abstract penal discourse that outlaws interventions on the body. The body ends up being the permanent object of punishment to the point of destruction and, at the same time, the object of protection of a legal discourse that constantly fails to guarantee compensation. The legal discourse neutralizes the prison reality and, with it, postpones fundamental decisions to avoid the brutal corporal punishment to which prisoners in Latin America are subjected.