ABSTRACT
This chapter is co-authored by criminologists from the United Kingdom and Brazil; the first named author is one of just a handful of Northern researchers to have familiarized themselves with Latin American prisons literature and conducted in-situ research in Latin American prisons. The second named author similarly joins a relatively small club of Latin American prison researchers to have published in English. In Latin America the continuous expansion of the power of punishment has been nourished mainly by drug prohibition policies. It is important to acknowledge the communal nature of prison life in Latin America – that is, the ways in which inmates' and staff's lives are shaped as much by personal relations produced through everyday encounters, collective struggles and reciprocal exchanges as individual indignities. In place of detachment, seen that a situated account of the encompassing character of institutional life in Latin American prisons points towards a need to consider the effects of fused functions and entangled relations.
