Hiperencarceramento no Brasil e crise civilizatória: trabalho e educação como direitos duplamente negados

Abstract

This thesis has as its main object of analysis the hyper-incarceration in Brazil in the first two decades of the 21st century. The research proposes to analyse the process of hyper-incarceration based on the categories of work, education and human emancipation. The development of this investigation is pertinent since the country has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the world. This fact has had a strong impact, mostly, on the lives of young, black, unemployed, low-educated people, which expresses the degree of selectivity of the Brazilian penal system. The core of the discussion proposed by this doctoral thesis is to understand the intertwined relationship between work, education and imprisonment, with the objective of discussing the limits and possibilities for building paths towards human emancipation. The questions that come out are: What are the links between the categories of work, education and the possibilities for human emancipation? What is the reason for the significant increase in the incarceration rate in the country in recent years? What is the place of work and education in contemporary Brazilian capitalism? In this way, the characterization of the national prison system is carried out; the association between access to work and education in Brazil and its relationship with the punitive system is investigated and; the evolution of the offer of work and education in prisons throughout Brazil in the proposed period is analysed. Historical materialism is adopted as an analysis procedure, in order to recognize the structure and dynamics of the prison system in the context of Brazilian capitalism. The research has a quantitative and qualitative character, adopting documental, bibliographical and descriptive analysis. The phenomenon of hyper-incarceration of a significant portion of the population that is not disciplined enough to offer its workforce to the labour market is the result of the exacerbation of the miseries sown daily to the great masses. This is the result of a particular capitalist development, with its historical roots linked to colonial-slave production relations. The conclusion is that capitalism in its current phase has contributed to conform work and education in Brazil to a situation of precariousness, being felt more deeply by the poor and black people of the country. The offer of work and education within prison, seen as fundamental activities towards resocialization, is still restricted to a small portion of inmates. Despite the advancement of educational policies aimed to expand intramural education, there is a tendency to replace formal basic education with complementary educational activities, of an increasingly precarious character. With regard to work in prisons, it has been increasingly used to make prison a profitable project, through the exploitation of prison labour.