Mass incarceration, colonial racial order, and neoliberal ideology in Brazil

Abstract

Mass incarceration is a striking reality in 19th-century Brazil, which already ranks third in the world. This prison complex is fueled by a criminal justice system that reaffirms the class and race hierarchies imposed by modernity. The system functions as a means of managing poverty and reinforcing racial privileges. Punishment is selective and aimed at neutralizing those made vulnerable by global capitalism, fostering the very criminality it is supposed to contain. To understand this phenomenon, we start with the following question: How do the various cultural processes of negotiation and imposition of meaning intertwine to weave a narrative justifying the need for imprisonment, which is continually readapted and updated according to the needs of the moment? The approach is circumscribed to the Brazilian reality, which must be understood from its specific situated circumstances. The technique of bibliographic review connected with secondary data on the profile of the Brazilian prison population is used, adopting a deductive approach. The research concludes that mass incarceration and the colonial racial order are intertwined and justified by neoliberal ideology, which decisively contributes to its acceptance by the population in the contemporary Brazilian context.

Keywords: Mass incarceration; racial hierarchy; neoliberal ideology; cultural criminology.