The penal platypus: Electronic monitoring in the ruins of Pedrinhas

Based on ethnographic research and document analysis, the article analyzes the implementation of electronic monitoring of offenders in Maranhão during the years following the massacres at the Pedrinhas Penitentiary Complex. Statistical data on the growth of the Maranhão prison population and the development of monitoring programs between 2014 and 2018 are also mobilized. The text recovers Chico de Oliveira’s concept of “platypus” to describe the coupling between the old and the new, the archaic and the modern, the filthy and the aseptic.

Keywords:
criminal justice; electronic monitoring; prison system; massacre