This article is part of the ethnography conducted during a Master’s research in the Graduate Program of the Center for Studies in Public Policy and Human Rights at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). In it, I examined the disciplinary techniques implemented in the Brazilian neodisciplinary prisons known as the Association for the Protection and Assistance of the Convicted (APAC). This study was carried out based both on the characteristics of disciplinary practices and on the contradictions, contrasts, and tensions observed. From the framework of Discipline and Punish, by Foucault, I described the control of time and activities, control of space, as well as of normalizing sanctions, examination, and hierarchical gaze, which are carried out with significant involvement of APAC members. Subsequently, I addressed the disciplinary techniques, as identified by Chantraine, related to communicational order and the “bombom” system, highlighting the differences between the effects observed by the author in a Canadian prison and what we have observed in APAC. Finally, I analyzed the therapy of reality and discipline by affective means, which do not find a perfect match in the aforementioned frameworks, to explore the connection between APAC and the common system, as well as the ambivalent role played by the APAC inmate’s family. I also delve into the contrast between the emotions that typically permeate the penal system and those that APAC intends to mobilize.
Keywords:
prison; punishment; crime; obedience; control