Prison Lives Matter

The lateral look of anthropology once again comes to our aid and guides us through the complexity of contemporary prisons and their relationship with society.

What happens when the concept of Total Institution and its corollaries are no longer useful to define the experience of imprisonment? When the boundary between urban ghetto and jail becomes porous and blurred and hybrid forms of self-management or co-management between State and prisoners emerge? In a continuous cross-reference between very different geographical and social contexts, Cerbini explores these questions just as anthropologists do, wich is starting from the experiences of individuals who actually live in prison and from their worldview. Thanks to the numerous ethnographies conducted in the last decade within penal institutions of the Global South and of the Global North, a radical change is thus looming of perspective that unhinges the uniqueness of the ideal model of penitentiary, synonymous of order and discipline, and allow us to reconsider connections and continuity between inside and outside, between prison and society. A mosaic of narratives and counter-narratives capable of return the multiform violence of contemporary prison governance and lay the foundations for a new theoretical statute of the prison institution.