A casa de prisão com trabalho da Bahia, 1833-1865. / The house of imprisonment with labour of Bahia, 1833-1865.

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2007

RESUMO

The aim of this thesis is to study the origins and initial years of operation of Bahias first penitentiary, known as the Casa de Prisão com Trabalho (Prison-Workhouse), from 1833 to 1865. I examine the debates among various elite groups regarding the adaptation of new ideas about penitentiaries to a slaveholding society as 19th-century Bahia was. I have also studied the profiles of the first prisoners in that institution between 1861 and 1865, in addition to discuss aspects of daily life in the prison. The first prison reform in Brazil was part of an international movement that began in Great Britain and the United States in the late 18th century. One of the reformers principal aims was to break with the traditional forms of punishment, which involved torture and public execution of convicts. The new concept of punishment was based on depriving criminals of their freedom and rehabilitating them. Prison reform in Bahia was symbolized by the construction of the Casa de Prisão com Trabalho, which began in 1834. The penitentiary received its first prisoners in 1861, but it would only be officially inaugurated two years later, in October 14, 1863, when its original regulations came into effect. A penitentiary system had to be introduced, and opinions were divided between the so-called Pennsylvania and Auburn systems, both of which were based on labor, religion and the isolation of convicts. The political and intellectual elites viewed prison labor as an important factor for disciplining the growing population of poor, free people, most of them coloreds. One of the greatest contradictions in the prison reforms in the Brazilian Empire was related to the Criminal Code of 1830, which established different punishments for the same crimes, depending on whether the perpetrator was free or enslaved. This duality contradicted the principle of equality that governed the penitentiary doctrine and was part of the civilizing and reformation discourse of the period. In other words, because Brazil was a full-fledged slaveocracy in the mid-19th century, a significant portion of its population the slaves fell outside the penitentiary discourse. In a partial reconstruction of the early years of Bahias prison-workhouse, I have found that convicts were not intimidated by the new forms of domination imposed on them. Among many other forms of resistance, they feigned illness to obtain privileges, wrote letters demanding their rights, complained about the quality and quantity of food, and, of course, they fled from the institution. An analysis of the profile of the prison population revealed that it was primarily composed of freeborn men, mostly pardos (brown-skinned persons or mulattos), and crioulos (blacks born in Brazil). The female population was very small. I have also included a study of Salvadors civilian, military and religious jails to provide a background and a context for the creation of Bahias first penitentiary.

ASSUNTO(S)

prison history bahia penitentiary prisão bahia trabalho penitenciária historia do brasil história século xix

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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