Brazilian authorities continuously fail to comply with international
norms on minimal conditions of incarceration. Brazil's prison population
has risen ten-fold since the country's return to democracy in the 1980s.
Its prisons typically operate at double official capacity and with 100
prisoners for each guard on duty. At the same time, however, the average
Brazilian prison is not as disorderly or its staff-inmate relations so
conflictual as our established theories on prison life might predict.
This monograph explores the means by which Brazilian prisons function in
the absence of guards. More specifically, the means by which prison
security and inmate discipline is negotiated between prison managers,
gangs and the wider inmate body. While fragile and varied, this
historical tradition of co-produced governance has for decades kept most
prisons in better order and enabled most prisoners to better survive.