Mass Incarceration, Mass Incorporation, and the Rise of a Protagonist Judiciary in Brazil
This presentation challenges the reproduction of dominant Northern theories by explaining how mass incarceration emerged and has persisted in Brazil—a peripheral, dependent state undergoing democratisation, economic growth, and social inclusion.
SocSci Hub
Date: Wednesday 29 October 2025
Time: 16:00 - 17:00
Venue: Online
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Dr Luiz Dal Santo, University of Oxford.
Dr Luiz Dal Santo, University of Oxford, argues that mass incarceration results from two intersecting processes: the expansion of the state and the rise of a protagonist judiciary, both operating within historically specific, structurally unequal conditions.
The first process traces Brazil’s shift from domestic, informal, and hidden forms of punishment—prevalent in slaveholding, rural, and authoritarian periods—to official state punishment. This transformation reflects deeper changes in social control, tied to the incorporation of previously marginalised populations into state governance.
The second process examines the judiciary’s central role in sustaining and intensifying mass incarceration. Empowered and expanded during the democratic transition yet left unreformed, the judiciary became a key actor in the penal state. Its bureaucratic and class-based filters have reproduced a judicial class largely aligned with a punitive consensus. Those who somehow overcome these filters and do not consensually adhere to the punitive normality eventually face institutional coercion through reassignment, disciplinary measures, and criminalisation. Dissent judges are then neutralised and institutional conformity ensured.
Combining historical-materialist and sociolegal analyses, this presentation shows how mass incarceration was not a deviation from democratic consolidation, but a constitutive element of it, shaped by the reconfiguration of state power, judicial roles, and class domination in post-authoritarian Brazil.
Biography:
Dr Luiz Dal Santo holds a DPhil in Criminology from the University of Oxford. He is co-founder of the Oxford Southernising Criminology Discussion Group and of the international conference series Punishment in Global Peripheries.
This workshop is part of the Social Analysis of Penality Across Borders series which is hosted by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.