Influência da arquitetura carcerária no fenômeno da territorialização no Complexo Penitenciário de São Luís-MA

Abstract

Prison architecture plays an important role in territorialization in the prison environment, involving the dispute and negotiation of power, the creation of collective identity and the manifestation of dominance relationships. The organization of prisons can directly influence territorialization, encouraging or discouraging the formation of territorial groups. The territorialization of prison space has implications for criminal sociology, which studies the relationship between crime and social factors in a society, and prison geography – an emerging and vibrant field of geography research, which provides perspectives for understanding the social and spatial processes involved in the prison environment. Prisoners try to establish strategies to create their own dynamics inside and outside penitentiary institutions through territorialization. The study in question sought to analyze how the architecture of prisons influences the process of territorialization in the penitentiary complex of São Luís - MA, within a micro and macro criminal sociology perspective. This was an autoethnographic research with a qualitative focus, using investigative techniques such as semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, participant observation, document and bibliographic analysis. Ten professionals from the Criminal Justice System participated directly in the research, providing answers and participating in the hearing of the questionnaires, in addition to five inmates who were impacted in some way by the State during the subversive movements in the period from 2013 to 2014. These practices resulted in a hierarchy informal among inmates, where some exercised control over others, often violently. The power dynamics in the prison space highlighted the fragility of the penitentiary system in guaranteeing the safety and integrity of inmates, in addition to revealing the inability of the State to fulfill its role of social reintegration of prisoners, reinforced by the prison architecture that did not fulfill the desired purpose.