Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:09:03.106Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The crisis of detention and the politics of denial in Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2017

Paul Hathazy  and
Markus-Michael Müller
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article assesses the causes of the crisis of detention in Latin America. It is argued that this crisis, which manifests itself in overpopulation of the region's prison systems, deficient infrastructure, prison informality and violence propelled ultimately by political processes, is mostly related to, on the one hand, disastrous human rights conditions inside Latin American prisons, and on other, the political denial of these conditions. This denial produces a state of institutional abandonment that is preserved by the interests of politicians and bureaucrats, who are engaged in denying prison violence and human rights abuses while simultaneously calling for more punishment and imprisonment.

Keywords

prison conditionsLatin Americaviolencedenialhuman rightsinternationalization strategies
Type
Conditions in detention
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 98 , Issue 903: Detention: Addressing the human cost , December 2016 , pp. 889 - 916
Copyright
Copyright © icrc 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Alonso Soto, “Brazil Drug Gangs Spark Prison Riot, 56 Dead”, Reuters, 2 January 2017; Nátalia Lucas, “Detentos foram esquartejados e decapitados em briga de facções em presídio de Manaus”, O Globo, 2 January 2017.

2 Jill Langlois, “126 Inmates Still at Large in Brazil after a Prison Riot that Left 56 Dead”, Los Angeles Times, 6 January 2017.

3 “Umanizzare esclarece o seu papel”, available at: www.umanizzarebrasil.com.br/noticias/umanizzare-esclarece-o-seu-papel/ (all internet references were accessed in October 2017).

4 Euan McKirdy and Jay Croft, “At Least 56 Killed in Brazil Prison Riot over Drug Turf, Officials Say”, CNN, 3 January 2017, available at: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/02/americas/brazil-prison-riot/.

5 Robert Muggah and Ilona Szabó de Carvalho, “Brazil's Deadly Prison System”, New York Times, 4 January 2017.

6 This term is borrowed from Li, Murray, The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development and the Practices of Politics, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2007 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Dammert, Lucia and Zúñiga, Liza, Prisons: Problems and Challenges for the Americas, FLACSO, Santiago de Chile, 2008, pp. 41–66 Google Scholar; Darke, Sacha and Karam, Maria Lúcia, “Latin American Prisons”, in Jewkes, Yvonne, Crewe, Ben and Bennett, Jamie (eds), Handbook on Prisons, 2nd ed., Routledge, Abingdon, 2012, p. 462 Google Scholar; Iturralde, Manuel, “Colombian Prisons as a Core Institution of Authoritarian Liberalism”, Crime, Law and Social Change, Vol. 65, No. 3, 2016, pp. 139–140 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hathazy, Paul and Müller, Markus-Michael, “The Rebirth of the Prison in Latin America: Determinants, Regimes and Social Effects”, Crime, Law and Social Change, Vol. 65, No. 3, 2016, p. 114–121 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Müller, Markus-Michael, “The Rise of the Penal State in Latin America”, Contemporary Justice Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2012, pp. 64–67 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 S. Darke and M. L. Karam, above note 7, p. 462.

9 Walmsley, Roy, World Prison Population List, 11th ed., Institute for Criminal Research Policy, Birkbeck, University of London, 2016, p. 2 Google Scholar, available at: www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/world_prison_population_list_11th_edition_0.pdf.

10 Ungar, Mark and Magaloni, Ana Laura, “Latin America's Prisons: A Crisis of Criminal Policy and Democratic Rule”, in Bergman, Marcelo and Whitehead, Laurence (eds), Criminality, Public Security and the Challenge to Democracy in Latin America, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN, 2009, p. 224 Google Scholar.

11 This number is based on data provided by the World Prison Population List, above note 9, including Caribbean countries.

12 In the case of Haiti, this extremely low number should mostly be seen as a reflection of the near-total destruction of all public infrastructure, including all the country's prisons, after the 2010 earthquake.

13 World Prison Population List, above note 9, pp. 5–7.

14 M. Ungar and A. L. Magaloni, above note 10, p. 226.

15 Elías Carranza, “Prisons in Latin America and the Caribbean: What to Do, What not to Do”, United Nations Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Resource Material Series No. 94, Fuchu, 2014, p. 193, available at: www.unafei.or.jp/english/pdf/RS_No94/No94_VE_Carranza.pdf.

16 Helmke, Gretchen and Levitsky, Steven, “Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda”, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2004, p. 727 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Hathazy, Paul, “Remaking the Prisons of the Market Democracies: New Experts, Old Guards and Politics in the Carceral Fields of Argentina and Chile”, Crime, Law and Social Change, Vol. 65, No. 3, 2016 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. Hathazy and M.-M. Müller, above note 7, p. 122.

18 See, for instance, Cavallaro, Jim, Kopas, Jacob, Lam, Yukyan, Mayhle, Timothy and de Biedermann, Soledad Villagra, Security in Paraguay: Analysis and Responses in Comparative Perspective, Harvard Law School, Human Rights Program, Cambridge, MA, 2008 Google Scholar; L. Dammert and L. Zúñiga, above note 7; Rivera, Lirio Gutierrez, Territories of Violence: State, Marginal Youth, and Public Security in Honduras, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2013 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. Hathazy and M.-M. Müller, above note 7, p. 130; M.-M. Müller, above note 7; Ungar, Mark, “Prisons and Politics in Contemporary Latin America”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4, 2003 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Müller, Markus-Michael, “The Universal and the Particular in Latin American Penal State Formation”, in Squires, Peter and Lea, John (eds), Criminalisation and Advanced Marginality: Critically Exploring the Work of Loïc Wacquant, Policy Press, Bristol, 2012 Google Scholar.

20 Birkbeck, Christopher and Pérez-Santiago, Neelie, “The Character of Penal Control in Latin America: Sentence Remissions in a Venezuelan Prison”, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Vol. 6, No. 3, 2006, p. 290 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 P. Hathazy and M.-M. Müller, above note 7, p. 121. See also Dias, Camila Nunes and Darke, Sacha, “From Dispersed to Monopolized Violence: Expansion and Consolidation of the Primeiro Comando da Capital's Hegemony in São Paulo's Prisons”, Crime, Law and Social Change, Vol. 65, No. 3, 2016 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; L. Gutierrez Rivera, above note 18; M.-M. Müller, above note 7, pp. 69–70; King, Roy D. and Valensia, Bruna, “Power, Control, and Symbiosis in Brazilian Prisons”, South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 113, No. 3, 2014 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Cruz, José Miguel, “Central American Maras: From Youth Gangs to Transnational Protection Rackets”, Global Crime Vol. 11, No. 4, 2010 Google Scholar; L. Gutierrez Rivera, above note 18; Willis, Graham Denyer, The Killing Consensus; Police, Organized Crime, and the Regulation of Life and Death in Urban Brazil, University of California Press, Oakland, CA, 2015 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Alicia Bárcena, “Latin America is the World's Most Unequal Region. Here's How to Fix It”, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2016, available at: www.cepal.org/en/articles/2016-latin-america-worlds-most-unequal-region-heres-how-fix-it.

24 Pinheiro, Paulo Sergio, “The Rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America: Introduction”, in Mendez, Juan E., O'Donnell, Guillermo and Pinheiro, Paulo Sergio, The (Un)Rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN, 1999 Google Scholar.

25 Holston, James, Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2008, pp. 228–229 Google Scholar.

26 M.-M. Müller, above note 7, p. 68.

27 Azaola, Elena and Bergman, Marcelo, “The Mexican Prison System”, in Cornelius, Wayne A. and Shirk, David A. (eds), Reforming the Administration of Justice in Mexico, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN, 2007, p. 112 Google Scholar; Carrión, Fernando “¿Por qué todos los caminos conducen a la miseria del panóptico?’”, URVIO: Revista Latinoamericana de Seguridad Ciudadana, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2007, pp. 1, 5–9 Google Scholar.

28 Cohen, Stanley, Estados de negación: Ensayo sobre atrocidades y sufrimiento, trans. Bellof, Mary, 1st ed., Univesidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, 2005, p. 11 Google Scholar.

29 P. Hathazy and M.-M. Müller, above note 7.

30 Müller, Markus-Michael, “Penalizing Democracy: Punitive Politics in Neoliberal Mexico”, Crime, Law and Social Change, Vol. 65, No. 3, 2016 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Sozzo, Maximo (ed.), Postneoliberalismo y penalidad en América del Sur, CLACSO, Buenos Aires, 2016 Google Scholar.

32 Paul Hathazy, “Entre la ‘represion’, la ‘prevención’ y la ‘seguridad interior’: Categorías y políticas de seguridad en la pos-transición Argentina”, study presented at workshop on “Estudios sociales sobre delito, policía y violencia: La seguridad en cuestión”, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 10 April 2017; Sunkel, Guillermo, “Medios de comunicación y violencia en la transición Chilena”, Cuadernos del Foro ’90, No. 3, 1992 Google Scholar; Chevigny, Paul, “The Populism of Fear: Politics of Crime in the Americas”, Punishment and Society, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2003, p. 79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salas, Yolanda, “Imaginaries and Narratives of Prison Violence”, in Rotker, Susana (ed.), Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 2000 Google Scholar.

33 P. Chevigny, above note 32.

34 Cavarozzi, Marcelo, Autoritarismo y democracia (1955–2006), Ariel, Buenos Aires, 2006, p. 56 Google Scholar, Rodriguez, Victoria, “Centralizing Politics vs. Decentralizing Policies in Mexico”, in Vellinga, Menno, The Changing Role of the State in Latin America, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1998 Google Scholar.

35 P. Hathazy and M.-M. Müller, above note 7.

36 Müller, Markus-Michael, The Punitive City: Privatised Policing and Protection in Neoliberal Mexico, Zed Books, London, 2016 Google Scholar.

37 P. Chevigny, above note 32; Wacquant, Loïc, “The Militarization of Urban Marginality: Lessons from the Brazilian Metropolis”, International Political Sociology, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2008 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hathazy, Paul, “(Re)Shaping the Neoliberal Leviathans: The Politics of Penality and Welfare in Argentina, Chile and Peru”, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, No. 95, October 2013 Google Scholar.

38 Antillano, Andres, “Crimen y castigo en la revolución bolivariana”, Cuestiones de Sociología: Revista de Estudios Sociales, No. 10, 2014 Google Scholar; Jorge Paladines, “La ‘mano dura’ de la Revolución Ciudadana (2007–2014)”, in M. Sozzo (ed.), above note 31; Martha Lia Grajales and Maria Lucrecia Hernandez, “Chavismo y política penal (1999–2014)”, in M. Sozzo (ed.), above note 31.

39 Arias, Enrique Desmond and Goldstein, Daniel M. (eds), Violent Democracies in Latin America, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2010 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Pearce, Jenny, “Perverse State Formation and Securitized Democracy in Latin America”, Democratization, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2010 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 M.-M. Müller, above note 36, pp. 5–9.

42 P. Hathazy and M.-M. Müller, above note 7, p. 116.

43 Paul Hathazy, “Democratizing Leviathan: Politics, Experts and Bureaucrats in the Transformation of the Penal State in Argentina and Chile”, PhD dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 2013, pp. 260–274; Hathazy, Paul, “Punitivism with a Human Face: Criminal Justice Reformers’ International and Regional Strategies and Penal-State Making in Argentina, Chile and Beyond”, Kriminologisches Journal, Vol. 48, No. 4, 2016 Google Scholar.

44 P. Hathazy and M.-M. Müller, above note 7; Bailey, John and Dammert, Lucia, Public Security and Police Reform in the Americas, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 2006 Google Scholar; Frühling, Hugo, “Police Reform and the Process of Democratization”, in Frühling, Hugo, Tulchin, Joseph S. and Golding, Heather A. (eds), Crime and Violence in Latin America: Citizen Security, Democracy, and the State, Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington, DC, 2003 Google Scholar.

45 Maier, Julio, Ambos, Kai and Woischnik, Jan (eds), Las reformas procesales penales en América Latina, Ad-Hoc, Konrad Adenauer Foundation and Max Planck Institut, Buenos Aires, 2001 Google Scholar; Rodriguez, Cesar, “Globalization, Judicial Reform and the Rule of Law in Latin America: The Return of Law and Development”, Beyond Law, Vol. 7, No. 23, 2001 Google Scholar; P. Hathazy, “Democratizing Leviathan”, above note 43, pp. 264–268.

46 See, for example, Echeverría, Sebastián Salinero, “¿Porqué aumenta la población penal en Chile? Un estudio criminológica longitudinal”, Revista Ius et Praxis, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2012, pp. 113–115 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; M. L. Grajales and M. L. Hernandez, above note 38; Pasara, Luis et al. , Independencia judicial insuficiente, prisión preventiva deformada: Los casos de Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador y Peru, Due Process of Law Foundation, Washington, DC, 2013 Google Scholar.

47 P. Hathazy and M.-M. Müller, above note 7; J. Bailey and L. Dammert, above note 44; H. Frühling, above note 44.

48 For Argentina and Chile, see P. Hathazy, “Democratizing Leviathan”, above note 43, pp. 220–246.

49 On criminal procedure, see ibid., p. 146; Riego, Christian, “The Chilean Criminal Procedure Reform”, International Journal of the Sociology of Law, Vol. 26, No. 4, 1998, p. 449 CrossRefGoogle Scholar for the Chilean case. For a regional trend, see P. Hathazy, “Punitivism with a Human Face”, above note 43, p. 314. Grajales and Hernandez, above note 38, and Paladines, above note 38, observe analogous subordination of human rights standards to security concerns in Venezuela and Ecuador.

50 See, for instance, Cleary, Edward L., Mobilizing for Human Rights in Latin America, Kumarian Press, Bloomflied, CT, 2007 Google Scholar.

51 See Special Issue on “Rebirth of the Prison”, Crime, Law and Social Change, Vol. 65, No. 3, 2016 Google Scholar, edited by Paul Hathazy and Markus-Michael Müller.

52 Luciana Pol, “Failed Drug Policies in Latin America: The Impact on Prisons and Human Rights”, Penal Reform International, 24 April 2015, available at: www.penalreform.org/blog/failed-drug-policies-in-latin-america-impact-on/.

53 M.-M. Müller, above note 7, p. 62.

54 Metaal, Pien and Youngers, Coletta, Systems Overload: Drug Laws and Prisons in Latin America, Transnational Institute and Washington Office on Latin America, Washington, DC, 2011, p. 5 Google Scholar, available at: www.tni.org/files/tni-systems_overload-def.pdf.

55 Corda, Alejandra, Drug Policy Reform in Latin America: Discourse and Reality, Colectivo de Estudios Drogas y Derecho, 2015 Google Scholar.

56 See, for instance, Lemaitre, Julieta and Albarracin, Mauricio “Patrullando la dosis personal: La represión cotidiana y los debates de las políticas públicas sobre el consumo de drogas ilíticas en Colombia”, in Uribe, Alejandro Gaviria and Londoño, Daniel Mejía (eds), Políticas antidroga en Colombia: Éxitos, fracasos, extravíos, Bogota, Universidad de los Andes, 2011 Google Scholar.

57 M.-M. Müller, above note 30, p. 232.

58 Milburn, Michael A. and Conrad, Sheree D., The Politics of Denial, MIT Press, Boston, MA, 1996, p. 2 Google Scholar.

59 Ibid ., p. 4.

60 S. Cohen, above note 28, p. 30.

61 Ibid .

62 E. D. Arias and D. M. Goldstein, above note 39.

63 P. Chevigny, above note 32; Sozzo, Máximo, “Populismo punitivo, proyecto normalizador y ‘prisión-depósito’ en Argentina”, Sistema Penal y Violencia, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2010 Google Scholar; Cisneros, Lucia Nuñovero, “Las razones y los sentimientos del encierro: consideraciones político económicas del aumento de las poblaciones penitenciarias en el Perú”, in Constant, Chloe (ed.), Pensar las cárceles de América Latina, Instituto de Estudios Andinos, Lima, 2016 Google Scholar.

64 Beckett, Katherine, Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997 Google Scholar.

65 Rey, German (ed.), Los relatos periodísticos del crimen: Como se cuenta el delito en la prensa escrita latinoamericana , Fundación Friedrich Ebert, Bogotá, 2007 Google Scholar. See also Cevallos, Jenny Pontón, “The Crime Section in Ecuadorian Media: A Problem of Citizen Security?”, Revista Urvio, No. 5, September 2008 Google Scholar; Cevallos, Jenny Pontón, “Prensa y situación carcelaria en el país”, Boletin Ciudad Segura: FLACSO sede Ecuador, No. 1, January 2006, p. 12 Google Scholar, available at: http://repositorio.flacsoandes.edu.ec/bitstream/10469/2355/1/BFLACSO-CS1.pdf.

66 S. Cohen, above note 28, p. 27.

67 These dynamics were already observed by Teresa Caldeira in the late 1990s in her study of the Carandirú prison massacre in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where all these implicatory denials of prison violence and of the atrocities committed in the recovery of the prisons were present. See Caldeira, Teresa P. R., “The Massacre at the Casa de Detencao”, in City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paulo, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA 2000, pp. 175–182 Google Scholar.

68 Garland, David, “Penality and the Penal State”, Criminology, Vol. 51, No. 3, 2013 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Sanchez, Manuel Iturralde and Ariza, Libardo, “Reformando el infierno: Los tribunales y la transformación del campo penitenciario en América Latina”, in Ariza, Libardo José and Iturralde, Manuel (eds), Los muros de la infamia: Prisiones en Colombia y en América Latina, CIJUS, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, 2011 Google Scholar.

70 Ibid ., p. 21.

71 P. Hathazy, “Democratizing Leviathan”, above note 43, pp. 244–245, 258–259; P. Hathazy, above note 17.

72 For the Argentine cases, see P. Hathazy, “Democratizing Leviathan”, above note 43, pp. 272–273.

73 On the politicization of judicial positions and punitive stances, see Pasara, Luis, “Prisión preventiva e independencia judicial en Colombía, Ecuador y Perú”, in La justicia en la región andina, Fondo Editorial, PUC-Peru, Lima, 2015, pp. 443–467 Google Scholar.

74 Pásara, Luis, “El ministerio público en la reforma procesal penal de Chile” and “Acerca de la reforma procesal penal en Chile, Ecuador y Perú”, in La justicia en la región andina, Fondo Editorial, PUC-Peru, Lima, 2015, pp. 115–152 Google Scholar; Lemgruber, Julita et al. , Ministerio Público: Guardiao da democracia brasileira?, Centro de Estudos de Seguranca e Cidadanía, Rio de Janeiro, 2016 Google Scholar.

75 P. Hathazy, “Democratizing Leviathan”, above note 43, p. 200; Jörg Alfred Stippel, “Acceso a la justicia en materia penitenciaria: ‘Una deuda pendiente y un desafió para el futuro’”, available at: www.oas.org/dsp/documentos/ministerial/pres%20Stippel%20esp-CE00379S04.pdf; Leal, Cesar Barros, La ejecución penal en América Latina a la luz de los derechos humanos, Porrúa, ILANUD and UNAM, 2009 Google Scholar.

76 Vial, Andres Dominguez (ed.), El sol en la ciudad: Estudios de prevención del delito y modernización penitenciaria, Editora Nacional de Derechos Humanos, Santiago de Chile, 1993 Google Scholar.

77 For the Argentine and Chilean cases, see P. Hathazy, “Democratizing Leviathan”, above note 43, pp. 275–276, 258–260; P. Hathazy “Punitivism with a Human Face”, above note 43.

78 On the informality of prisons in Latin America, see Birkbeck, Christopher, “Imprisonment and Internment: Comparing Penal Institutions North and South”, Punishment and Society, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2011 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the everyday markets of goods and information in prisons, see, for example, Francesca Cerbini, “El espacio carcelario y la organización interna de los reclusos de San Pedro (La Paz, Bolivia): Repensando el concepto de vigilar y castigar”, and Andres Antillano, “La prisión en dos tiempos: La cárcel venezolana entre el neolibralismo y la revolucíon bolivariana”, in C. Constant (ed.), above note 63.

79 On the professionalizing tendencies of political agents in the new Latin American democracies, see M. Cavarozzi, above note 34, p. 56.

80 For Brazil, see Salla, Fernando, “As rebeliões nas prisões: Novos significados a partir da experiência Brasileira”, Sociologias, Vol. 8, No. 16, 2006 Google Scholar. For Chile and Argentina, see P. Hathazy, “Democratizing Leviathan”, above note 43, p. 225. For Venezuela, see A. Antillano, above note 78.

81 A prime example is the process of relocation observed in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, the biggest prison system in Latin America, as documented in Silvestre, Giane, “O proceso de interiorizacao penitenciaria em Sao Paulo”, in Dias de visita: Uma sociología da punicao e das prisoes, Alameda, São Paulo, 2012, pp. 121–130 Google Scholar.

82 See Draper, Susana, Afterlives of Confinement: Spatial Transitions in Postdictatorship Latin America, Pittsburgh University Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 2012 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 Dezalay, Yves and Garth, Bryant G., The Internationalization of Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists and the Contest to Transform Latin American States, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2002, p. 7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Müller, Markus-Michael, “De-Monopolizing the Bureaucratic Field: Internationalization Strategies and the Transnationalization of Security Governance in Mexico City”, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2014 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 P. Hathazy, “Democratizing Leviathan”, above note 43, p. 224.

85 The human rights reports of the 1970s gave renown to human rights organizations documenting the aberrant human rights violations during dictatorship. See Dezalay, Yves and Garth, Bryant G., “From the Cold War to Kosovo: The Rise and Renewal of the Field of International Human Rights”, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2006 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 Riego, Cristian, “La prisión durante el proceso penal en Chile”, Cuadernos de Análisis Jurídico, No. 16, 1990 Google Scholar; P. Hathazy, “Democratizing Leviathan”, above note 43, p. 223.

87 See Stippel, Jörg Alfred, Las cárceles y la búsqueda de una política criminal para Chile, LOM, Santiago de Chile, 2006, p. 34 Google Scholar; S. Salinero Echeverría, above note 46, p. 115.

88 Three weeks after the first massive protest in prisons in Chile, the justice and public works ministers announced a programme to build prisons for 16,000 inmates, putting them in the hands of private companies: El Mercurio, 14 January 2001.

89 The government privatized prisons “the French way”, retaining security and supervision of prisons and contracting out building and operations, as well as provision of food, laundry, medical and rehabilitation “services”: El Mercurio, 14 January 2001. For an analysis of the privatization process, see P. Hathazy, “Democratizing Leviathan”, above note 43, pp. 226–229.

90 Their 2002 report showed overcrowding, lack of hygiene, insufficient food, prisons controlled by inmates with high levels of violence, deaths, and a highly tense order produced by the collaboration between abusive and exploitative gangs and despotic guards. The report also denounced systematic torture and physical abuses. See Castro, Alvaro and Hernandez, Martin Besio, “Chile: Las cárceles de la miseria”, Pena y Estado: Revista Latinoamericana de Political Criminal, Vol. 6, No. 6, 2005 Google Scholar.

91 CODEPU, “¿Quienes somos?”, available at: www.codepu.cl/pagina-ejemplo/.

92 CONFRAPECO, “Confraternidad de Familiares y Amigos de Presos Comunes – CONFAPRECO”, Idealist.org, available at: www.idealist.org/es/ong/5f3558ab54bd4125b4ddd95146bfdb6a-confraternidad-de-familiares-y-amigos-de-presos-comunes-confapreco-santiago-de-chile.

93 de Derechos Humanos, Centro, Informe anual sobre derechos humanos en Chile 2009, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile, 2010, p. 96 Google Scholar.

94 This was a private institution owned by the Federal Republic of Germany that under the banner of technical assistance (technische Zusammenarbeit) provided development aid to countries in the global South between 1975 and 2011.

95 See, for instance, Feest, Johannes, “Hacia un sistema de control de la ejecucion de penas no privativas de libertad”, Boletín Jurídico del Ministerio de Justicia, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2003 Google Scholar.

96 See above note 80.

97 Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty “Rapporteurship on the Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty Concludes Visit to Chile”, Press Release No. 39/08, 2008, available at: www.cidh.oas.org/Comunicados/English/2008/39.08eng.htm.

98 In 1994 the IACHR declared that steps must be made “to remedy inhuman conditions in prisons”, and it began dealing with them in its annual report of 1995. It issued a recommendation in 1998, has produced country studies since 1998, and created a special rapporteurship on the rights of persons deprived of liberty in its 119th session, in March 2004. See: www.oas.org/en/iachr/pdl/default.asp.

99 The Council was formed entirely of “specialists” from think-tanks and NGOs: the Fundación Paz Ciudadana, Center for the Study of Security, led by Hugo Frühling; the FLACSO Security and Citizenship Program, directed by Lucía Dammnert; and Cristian Riego from the Justice Studies Center of the Americas. The think-tanks and university expert were joined by the Supreme Court prosecutor, and representatives of the Ministries of Justice and the Interior. The minister of justice asked them to work on rehabilitation. See Consejo para la Reforma Penitenciaria, Recomendaciones para una nueva política penitenciaria, Ministerio de Justicia de Chile, Santiago de Chile, 2010 Google Scholar.

100 Ibid .

101 de Derechos Humanos, Centro, “Sistema penitenciacio y derechos humanos”, in Informe anual sobre derechos humanos en Chile 2009, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile, 2010, p. 109 Google Scholar.

102 de Derechos Humanos, Centro, “Sistema penitenciacio y derechos humanos”, in Informe anual sobre derechos humanos en Chile 2011, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile, 2011, pp. 111–113 Google Scholar, section “Incendio de la Carcel San Miguel”.

103 Ibid ., pp. 113–118, section “Reformas y avances desde 2010 a la fecha”.

104 Law 20.588, “Indulto general”, 22 May 2012, available at: www.leychile.cl/Navegar?idNorma=1040511.

105 Law 20.587, “Modifica el régimen de libertad condicional y establece en caso de multa la pena alternativa de trabajos comunitarios”, 8 July 2012, available at: www.leychile.cl/Navegar?idNorma=1040829.

106 de Derechos Humanos, Centro, Informe anual sobre derechos humanos en Chile 2014, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile, 2014, p. 286 Google Scholar.

107 M.-M. Müller, above notes 30 and 36; Müller, Markus-Michael, “Penal Statecraft in the Latin American City: Assessing Mexico City's Punitive Urban Democracy”, Social and Legal Studies, Vol. 22, No. 4, 2013 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

108 Heinle, Kimberly, Ferreira, Octavio Rodríguez and Shirk, David A., Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis through 2015, Justice in Mexico Project, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, 2016 Google Scholar, available at: https://justiceinmexico.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DrugViolenceinMexico-Final-2015.pdf.

109 See Longston, Jay, Democratization and Authoritarian Party Survival: Mexico's PRI, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

110 de la República, Presidencia, 4to. Informe de Gobierno: 2015–2016. Anexo estadístico, Gobierno de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Mexico City, 2016, p. 53 Google Scholar.

111 On the latter, see Watch, Americas, Prison Conditions in Mexico, Human Rights Watch, New York, 1991 Google Scholar.

112 CNDH, Diagnóstico nacional de supervisión penitenciaria 2014, CNDH, Mexico City, 2014 Google Scholar.

113 Mendoza, Arturo Alvarado, “La criminalidad y las políticas de seguridad en México”, Cuestiones de Sociología, No. 10, 2014 Google Scholar.

114 M.-M. Müller, above note 30, p. 233.

115 Personal interview with NGO member, Mexico City, April 2008.

116 M.-M. Müller, above note 36, pp. 101–102.

117 Personal interview with NGO member, Mexico City, June 2006.

118 On the difficulties of access to government by civil society actors, see Lean, Sharon F., “Enhancing Accountability in Mexico: Civil Society in a New Relationship with the State?”, LASA Forum, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2014 Google Scholar, available at: https://lasa.international.pitt.edu/forum/files/vol45-issue1/Debates3.pdf.

119 Personal interview, NGO member, Mexico City, July 2007, quoted in Müller, Markus-Michael, “The Struggle over Human Rights in Mexico”, in Hoffmann-Holland, Klaus (ed.), Ethics and Human Rights in a Globalized World, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 2009 Google Scholar.

120 M.-M. Müller, above note 83.

121 Nigel Rodley, “Torture and Conditions of Detention in Latin America”, in J. E. Mendez, G. O'Donnell and P. S. Pinheiro, above note 24, pp. 39–40.

122 IACHR, Report on the Human Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty in the Americas, Washington, DC, 2011, pp. 219–220 Google Scholar, available at: www.oas.org/en/iachr/pdl/docs/pdf/PPL2011eng.pdf.

123 Y. Dezalay and B. G. Garth, above note 83, p. 249.

124 Ibid .