La militarizzazione della marginalità urbana: lezioni dalla metropoli brasiliana

This article examines the deleterious effects of the importation of us A-style penal policies contemporary Second World and Third World societies, with particular reference to Brazil. In fact, the context of the global circulation of punitive discourses and practices such as nero tolerance, law & order and war on crime, the Brazilian case offers itself as a peculiar laboratory which the dramatic paradoxes of the emerging neoliberal penality can be observed in action. After documenting the inhuman condi-tions of Brazilian prisons, the undemocratic functioning of Brazilian police forces, and the hyerarchical structure of race and dass Brazilian society, Wacquant suggests that the importation of us-based punitive approaches to urban poverty and marginality would further aggravate the dramatic inequalities already affecting Brazil. With the insights offered by the devastating impact they had the us metropolis the 1990s, Wacquant suggests that the diffusion of these punitive policies within developing societies would represent a strong obstacle to their already tortuous way toward democracy.