Precarious Technologies of Access to Justice

Letters from Incarcerated Individuals to the Rio de Janeiro Public Prosecutor’s Office

Abstract

This article analyzes letters sent by incarcerated individuals and their families to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the State of Rio de Janeiro. Taking epistolary writing as a primary source, the work investigates how these subjects narrate daily prison life and formulate demands to the State. It is argued that the letters operate as a “precarious technology of access to justice”: an unstable resource traversed by institutional filters, yet central to breaking the opacity of the carceral system. Based on the systematization of complaints, the results indicate a predominance of requests regarding penal execution, followed by reports of restrictions on contact with the outside world, institutional violence, and the precariousness of material conditions. The analysis further reveals an ambivalent relationship with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, mobilized simultaneously as an instance of hope and guardianship but perceived with frustration due to delays and detachment. It is concluded that these correspondences constitute political gestures of interpellation that expose the mismatch between legal guarantees and the reality of custody.