ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s, prisons in Latin America have witnessed a considerable rise in the prison population, which has led to deteriorating conditions and outbreaks of inmate violence and riots (Gutiérrez Rivera, 2013; Müller, 2012; Ungar, 2003). This not only raises questions about the traditional notions of the prison but has forced scholars to rethink the role of the prison in contemporary societies. Recent scholarship on the prison in this region has focused on understanding the impact of global policies of crime control on the prison system and the penalisation of poor male adults (Gutiérrez Rivera, 2016; Wacquant, 2003a); the exportation of penitentiary models (Müller, 2015); and prison gangs (Biondi, 2010; Gutiérrez Rivera, 2010). However, studying the Latin American prison under the lens of carceral mobilities is a project yet to be completed. Mobilities within carceral space have been garnering scholarly attention in recent years (Philo, 2014; Moran, 2015; Moran et al., 2012). Yet, most studies centre on industrial countries in the Global North. This chapter looks at mobilities in the context of Latin America, in particular a prison in Honduras. Due to lack of resources and manpower, prison administrators in Latin American prisons allow inmates to supervise and control many aspects of the prison life, such as the prison economy, food and health access, and even the movements of inmates. These self-governing regimes have become a common feature of Latin American prisons (Darke and Karam, 2016). Under these circumstances, how is inmate mobility decided? How do inmates negotiate access to move?
