Estado punitivo e criminalização da pobreza: da segregação socioespacial à segregação carcerária.

Abstract

This paper aims to debate questions concerning prisonal population in Brazil and its parallels with the country’s marginalized population. We seek to analyze how the Punitive State, a face of the socioeconomics of neoliberalism, acts in segregating poor masses living in peripheral neighborhoods of the cities. The difficulty to access infrastructure and basic urban services, allied with the constant monitoring of the State control apparatuses characterize these territories. Trough the analysis of Brazilian criminal legislation, and after the comparison between the databases of INFOPEN and of “Atlas de Desenvolvimento do Brasil”, our argument is that the population inhabiting Brazilian prisons is analogous to that that is sociospatially segregated in cities. Both populations present some characteristics, such as a majority of black and brown people with low educational levels and in poverty situation.