Confinement, Risk and Uncertainty: The Psychosocial Impacts of Prison Work

This presentation addresses the representations of risk and its psychosocial effects on workers at the National Institute of Adolescent Social Inclusion (INISA), the institution responsible for managing adolescent detention centers in Uruguay. Within carceral environments, there is an omnipresent sense of risk that is experienced not only as a constant physical threat but also as a symbolic dimension that permeates all labor practices, creating an atmosphere of uncertainty, constant alertness, and emotional fatigue.

The theoretical framework guiding this presentation is situated within contemporary debates on risk and uncertainty, proposing an interpretation that links large-scale theoretical systems of risk with the microdynamics of intersubjective labor practices in confinement contexts. From this perspective, risk in carceral settings should not be understood solely in terms of objective threats but as a discursive construction that reinforces social and institutional inequalities, exacerbating workers' vulnerability.

This presentation is an intermediate stage of an ongoing doctoral research project (FCS, UdelaR), which constitutes an ideographic and qualitative case study on the configuration of order in carceral settings. Through an analysis of 50 interviews, the ongoing study reveals how INISA workers not only manage the constant threat of crises in their daily work but also develop subjective coping strategies that, while effective in the short term, come at a high psychological cost, as they tend to generate emotional exhaustion over time. This exhaustion, fueled by a culture of immediacy and a lack of institutional reflexivity, affects workers not only within the prison environment but also in their personal relationships and overall well-being outside of the workplace.