Between dreams and nightmares: Punishment and crime control in Brazil

The return of democracy has deeply changed the social structure of Brazil since the reappearance of full civil rights and the enlargement of social provisions granted by the 1988 Constitution. The increase of crime and the escalation of incarceration during the same period have, nonetheless, impaired many of these achievements. Punishment and crime control have become pressing social problems requiring the attention of governmental authorities in federal, state and local levels. The recent emergence of this crime complex in the country presents a challenge to the consolidation of democracy and the establishment of a truly inclusive polity. In order to untangle this contemporary phenomenon, this dissertation harks back to the independence of the country and unveils the thread of rationalities leading to this current predicament. At different historical moments, state attempts at the modernization of society affected the dynamics of social control, enlarging the reach of formal institutions in the governance of social life. In general, though, the criminal justice apparatus maintained just a circumscribed range, keeping unchecked the traditional structures of informal social control. This dissertation aims at demonstrating how these modernization efforts have finally managed to reach larger areas and sectors of the population previously left at the margins of the state apparatus. As an unintended consequence of the expansion of the state machinery of justice, police surveillance and imprisonment became readily available for addressing interpersonal conflicts in social settings previously outside the scope of formal institutions of social control, leading to its present soaring rates. Following the enactment of four different criminal codes since the country's independence, the dissertation analyzes each of the rationalities behind these different periods and set them against their respective political and social background. The scrutiny of state action in the enlargement of its bureaucracy and public policies helps to understand how a long and intricate process of modernization may have resulted in the gradual uprooting of traditional forms of sociability and control, whilst displaying the very failure of these modernizing efforts in bringing about an effective bureaucratic governance of social life.