The Transmutation of Punitivism: an analysis of the judicial and penitentiary policy of the State of Acre
Punitivism; Prison Overcrowding; Electronic monitoring
This thesis analyzes judicial and penitentiary policies in the state of Acre from January 2014 to May 2024 and their relationship with the prison population. The research sought to understand how the Judiciary in Acre, through secondary criminalization, manages the power to punish and what are the punishment and control strategies are, and how judicial policies interfered with the prison population. In the last ten years, electronic monitoring has grown exponentially in Acre, but has this policy encouraged decarceration and the reduction of the Penal State in social life? Or did it selectively increase its reach to reinforce a framework of ins titutional violence? To answer these questions, flow research was carried out on 1,114 cases at the Superior Court of Justice, and documentary research was carried out, with qualitative analysis of 230 documents and reports from the Institute of Penitentiary Administration of Acre and the Penitentiary Electronic Monitoring Unit. The result revealed trends in local judicial and peni tentiary policies that differ from control and punishment strategies on the national scene. But are these policy trends punitive? The lack of a conceptual consensus to define what punitivism is in criminological literature makes it difficult to interpret and attribute meanings to contemporary judicial and penitentiary policies. Therefore, a set of categories is proposed to interpret whether a policy is punitive or not. In a system in which discourses and practices were structured by racism and colonialism, only a decolonizing hermeneutic s can allow new readings on the political and social dimensions of punitive power and new horizons for the reformulation of judicial policies.