What is prison and which countries are with the most prisoners in the world

Analyzing the ten countries with the largest number of imprisoned in the world, among which the United States and the Chinawe can see how different cultural and historical approaches give life to very different prison systems. From the punitive model of the United States, deeply rooted in the collective consciousness Through politicians such as the “War on Drugs”, to social control systems in China, each context offers ideas to understand the variety of practices and beliefs related to punishment. It must be kept in mind that prison is not only a physical place, but an institution that reflects and reproduces wider ideas on justice, power and social control.

The use of prison as a reflection of cultural and historical norms

The “prison” institution reflects the cultural rules, values ​​and beliefs that a company has regarding crime and punishment, the dominant conceptions of justice, social order and control. For example, in some cultures, corporal punishment or economic compensation are preferred to the incarceration, highlighting how the responses to the crime are deeply influenced by the cultural and historical context. For example, in United States The prison system is strongly influenced by a punitive conception of justice, in Chinaon the other hand, prison is often used as an instrument of check social and political, with severe penalties for crimes against the state. On the other hand, in some American African and indigenous companiesor in some indigenous communities of Canada and New Zealand, the mediation between the victim and guilty is favored, with the aim of restoring thesocial harmony rather than punishing through detention. In countries with a long colonial and authoritarian tradition, prison has been imposed as a tool for repression and control of the population, while in contexts in which justice developed in a more community way, punishment tends to be more oriented to the repair of the damage than to the isolation of the individual.

Alternatives to prison

Today, the debate On prison he purchased new relevance thanks to social studies. Many companies, even today, avoid prison and adopt models of horizontal justicewhere the repair of damage and social reintegration are more important than individual punishment. Some anarchist and self -managed communities refuse prison and are based on consensual justice and collective responsibility. Recent experiments, such as popular courts in Latin America or participatory justice in India, show that it is possible to resolve conflicts without resorting to prison institutions. These alternatives they challenge The idea that punishment should be the main tool for social regulation and suggest that mass detention is a political and economic choice.

Prison as a total institution

Prison is a classic example of Total institutionconcept developed by the sociologist Erving Goffman in his study Asylums (1961). Total institutions are environments in which individuals live separate from society for a long period, subjected to rigid rules that regulate every aspect of daily life; He shares these characteristics with psychiatric hospitals, barracks and monasteries, distinguishing himself for his punitive and re -educational goal. The isolation from the outside world and constant surveillance transform prisoners into subjects whose identity is redefined by the institution. The process of mortification of the selfas Goffman defines it, reduces the individual to a number: this dynamic can lead to profound psychological effects, including the loss of self-confidence and the difficulty of post-dental social reintegration. Also Michel Foucault, in Supervise and punish (1975), highlighted how prison works more like social control tool that of re -education. More recently some scholars such as Didier Fassin have found that prison is above all in some contexts, used as a device to regulate marginalized groups (e.g. immigrants). In this perspective, prison is not only a place of individual punishment, but one political space which reflects the social hierarchies and cultural values ​​of a society. Its function is not only that of “reforming” criminals, but also to delimit those who are included and those who are excluded from the dominant social order.