O que o perfil racializado da população carcerária no Brasil tem a nos dizer? Uma análise sobre o encarceramento em massa e o racismo estrutural na periferia do capitalismo do século XXI

This article aims to problematize the relationship between mass incarceration and structural racism, seeking to support the debate by characterizing the profile of the prison population in Brazil between the years 2018-2021. This is a theoretical reflection drawn from a documentary survey of the statistical data present in the reports of the National Penitentiary Information Survey (INFOPEN). In this sense, it was possible to verify that the Brazilian prison system has been extremely selective: a specific populationis often the target of the State’s social control practices – the black, brown, poor and peripheral population. Under it, the State plays a substantively criminal role, in order to reinforce its criminalization and association with a “delinquent” and “dangerous” population. However, it turns out that, on the periphery of capitalism, the marginalization of this population is neither recent nor new: it establishes a relationship with the structural racism that permeates our social relations, reiterating itself in the 21st century.