On the Relationship Between Organized Crime and the Brazilian Prison System

The aim of the present paper is to analyze how criminal organizations influence the daily life of Brazilian prisons and how ineffective the solution presented by the government is in terms of trying to control the conflicts and rebellions in which they are routinely involved. To this end, we will study the emergence of the main criminal organizations in Brazil, namely the “Comando Vermelho” and the “Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC)”, in order to determine what factors influenced their founders to converge their interests and form these groups, which are currently no longer limited to the intra-prison space, but rather control entire slums in large Brazilian cities, controlling not only drug trafficking, but also the daily lives of their inhabitants. Subsequently, based on the theoretical framework of penal abolitionism, we will demonstrate that the solutions presented by the government are incapable of controlling the emergence and action of criminal organizations.