‘Whose prisoners are these anyway?’ Church, state and society partnerships and co-production of offender ‘resocialisation’ in Brazil

Abstract

This chapter examines an innovative experience in prison management pioneered in the 1990s in São Paulo state, Brazil, whereby small, decentralised prison units were co-managed by community-based NGOs and the state prison authorities. These Resocialisation Centres (Centros de Ressocialização - CRs) were human rights compliant, run at half the cost of mainstream prisons, and emphasised rebuilding humane relationships between prisoners, and prisoners and their families. The CRs were inspired by Catholic volunteers completely taking over local jails, which came to be known as APACs. The chapter contrasts the APAC and CR ethos and practice. The former insisted on Christian faith, voluntarism and a sceptical view of the state as a penal actor. The latter preferred a secular approach, semi-professionalised NGOs, and formal partnerships that see the state as potentially capable of meeting its human rights and democratic legal commitments to those it incarcerates. The CR model of co-production of offender rehabilitation and desistance thus enables the local community to assist the state’s ‘moral performance’ within its penal institutions. The CR experiment is analysed in relation to competing models of prison governance (including forms of semi-privatization), and competition between criminal justice, civil society and religious actors for ‘ownership’ of the offender.