This groundbreaking work examines Latin America's prison crisis and the failure of mass incarceration policies. As crime rates rose over the past few decades, policy makers adopted incarceration as the primary response to public outcry. Yet, as the number of inmates increased, crime rates only continued to grow. Presenting new cross-national data based on extensive surveys of inmates throughout the region, this book explains the transformation of prisons from instruments of incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation to drivers of violence and criminality. Bergman and Fondevila highlight the impacts of internal drug markets and the dramatic increase in the number of imprisoned women. Furthermore, they show how prisons are not isolated from society - they are sites of active criminal networks, with many inmates maintaining fluid criminal connections with the outside world. Rather than reducing crime, prisons have become an integral part of the crime problem in Latin America.

Rather than reducing criminality, prisons in Latin America drive crime by creating the conditions for its growth.

About the Author
Marcelo Sergio Bergman is Professor of Sociology and Criminology at the National University of Tres de Febrero (UNTREF). He has conducted empirical research on crime for the last twenty years while working in the USA, Mexico, and Argentina. His book More Money More Crime (2018) won the 2019 most outstanding book award by the Comparative and International divisions of the American Society of Criminologists. He has directed many data collection projects and is the founding director of two research centers: PESED (CIDE-Mexico) and CELIV (Argentina). Gustavo Javier Fondevila is Professor of Law at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE). He is one of Latin America's foremost criminologists and is a leading expert on prisons in the region. Fondevila has published numerous books and papers in prestigious international criminology journals.

Reviews
'For decades, countries across Latin America have followed the U.S.'s lead in trying to incarcerate away problems of crime, violence, drugs, social exclusion, and inequality. Even more than in the U.S., the carceral turn has not just failed to solve these problems - it has almost certainly made them worse. This carefully researched book breaks new ground, drawing on extensive surveys of inmates throughout Latin America that both give voice to the prisoners themselves and provide a powerful empirical basis for systematic thinking about the failure of mass incarceration across Latin America. Indeed, Bergman and Fondevila's work has insights not just for Latin America but across what we might rightly call the "carceral hemisphere," and should provide a sorely lacking bridge between the study of crime and prisons in the United States and research on crime and violence in Latin America.' Benjamin Lessing, University of Chicago
'The prison crisis is a problem present throughout Latin America. Often made invisible by policies that emphasize punishment and a citizenry that seeks protection from crime; in most countries prisons are places of violence. In this excellent work, Bergman and Fondevila describe the multiple dimensions of the crisis and confirm that waves of incarceration have been key factors in increasing crime and violence. An urgent and necessary book, based on unique and comparative evidence, that allows us to further discuss a key issue to reduce violence and crime in the region.' Lucia Dammert, Universidad de Santiago de Chile



Book Information
ISBN 9781108738194
Author Marcelo Bergman
Format Paperback
Page Count 250
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 432g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 16mm