Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / L. Susan Williams / Since the early 1970s, the United States has grown increasingly reliant on the criminal justice system to manage a wide array of social problems. Aggressive drug control policies and an over-reliance on imprisonment helped produce the world’s largest prison and correctional population, often described as mass imprisonment. Within this context, the study provides an explanatory account of the political, cultural, and social conditions that encourage states like Kansas to pursue methamphetamine as a major public concern, and to a greater degree than other states with relatively higher meth problems. Ultimately, and most important, the study makes a theoretical contribution by demonstrating how meth control efforts, analogous to previous drug control campaigns, extends punitive drug control rationalities to new cultural contexts and social terrains beyond the so-called ghetto of the inner city, thereby reinforcing and extending the logics of mass imprisonment.

Nesse trabalho, a incidência da prisão para além de seus limites físicos e institucionais é problematizada a partir da exploração e confrontação de dois contextos sociais distintos: a Catalunha e São Paulo. Os vasos comunicantes que conectam a prisão a outros territórios sociais, bem como as experiências de diversos agentes que fazem a mediação entre o mundo prisional e a sociedade mais ampla, são questões abordadas através de uma perspectiva analítico-descritiva, visando evidenciar a produção de um multifacetado campo social estruturado ao redor e através das instituições prisionais. Explorando diferentes trajetórias que se conformam nesse campo é possível problematizar algumas das circunstâncias do processo de massificação do encarceramento, assim como outras importantes alterações recentes no dispositivo carcerário contemporâneo. / This work intends to problematize the impacts of prison beyond its physical and institutional limits. Such aim is achieved through exploration and confrontation of two different social contexts: Catalonia and São Paulo. The communicating vessels, which connect jail to other social territories, and the experience of several agents, that provide mediation between prison and the rest of society, are questions treated through an analytical-descriptive perspective, intending to show up the production of a multifaceted social field that is structured around and through prison institutions. Exploring different paths in this field, it is possible to problematize some circumstances of mass imprisonment process, as well as recent changes in the penal contemporary mechanism.

Nesse trabalho, a incidência da prisão para além de seus limites físicos e institucionais é problematizada a partir da exploração e confrontação de dois contextos sociais distintos: a Catalunha e São Paulo. Os vasos comunicantes que conectam a prisão a outros territórios sociais, bem como as experiências de diversos agentes que fazem a mediação entre o mundo prisional e a sociedade mais ampla, são questões abordadas através de uma perspectiva analítico-descritiva, visando evidenciar a produção de um multifacetado campo social estruturado ao redor e através das instituições prisionais. Explorando diferentes trajetórias que se conformam nesse campo é possível problematizar algumas das circunstâncias do processo de massificação do encarceramento, assim como outras importantes alterações recentes no dispositivo carcerário contemporâneo. / This work intends to problematize the impacts of prison beyond its physical and institutional limits. Such aim is achieved through exploration and confrontation of two different social contexts: Catalonia and São Paulo. The communicating vessels, which connect jail to other social territories, and the experience of several agents, that provide mediation between prison and the rest of society, are questions treated through an analytical-descriptive perspective, intending to show up the production of a multifaceted social field that is structured around and through prison institutions. Exploring different paths in this field, it is possible to problematize some circumstances of mass imprisonment process, as well as recent changes in the penal contemporary mechanism.