Punishment and Incarceration in Brazil: Punitivism and “Punitive Turn” from a Global South Perspective

The discussions in the Sociology of Punishment have pointed to a kind of punitive will that dominates contemporary societies. The ideas of a punitive turn, beginning in the second half of the 20th century, and the general advance of punitivism have been central to debates in this field of research over the past decades. However, most diagnoses and studies in the area still rely on theories and research limited to national or regional contexts in North America and Western Europe. The aim of this paper is precisely to discuss these issues from the perspective of the Brazilian context and the research of local authors. Brazilian society is still marked by significant social inequalities and discriminatory practices based on class, race, and gender, among others. Local punitive practices, in turn, have always been characterized by brutality, selectivity, and, in contemporary times, a neglect of Human Rights. The increase in incarceration in recent decades has intensified these characteristics rather than changed the situation, reverberating in the emergence of so-called organized crime and paradoxical dynamics, such as the current rise of the ideal of rehabilitation, which occurs in a context of re-democratization and the expansion of the struggle for rights in the country. Thus, through a historical reconstruction of punishment policies in the country, the goal is to problematize the diagnoses of a punitive turn and the advance of punitivism, considering the specificities of the Brazilian context.