Analyzing alternatives to prison

proposal to overcome a dichotomy

Abstract

In this article, it is proposed that criminal alternatives to prison be taken as instruments in a political struggle, through techniques that can be positioned in different ways, according to the power technologies in which they are employed and according to the power-knowledge relationships in which work. The argument is based on the problematization of two perspectives on criminal alternatives in Brazil: first, that the implementation of criminal alternatives to prison represented a break with the centrality of prison in Brazilian criminal policy; second, that criminal alternatives only reinforce this centrality. The first perspective is problematized from analyzes that sought to assess the effects of criminal alternatives on the levels of incarceration. The second perspective is problematized from the analyzes that point to the different political-criminal trends in Brazil since the emergence of criminal alternatives to prison in 1984 and from the analyzes that point to the different configurations adopted by penal institutions according to the concepts of crime and criminalized subject that guide them.