A penalidade neoliberal e o boom carcerário norte-americano

Abstract

The present paper aims to indicate and understand the causes of the North American prison boom, a phenomenon that induced over-crowded prisons from the second half of the twentieth century on, more specifically in the 1980's. By means of the qualitative/quantitative method, the bibliographic research combined with the statistical data analysis allowed to foresee the context created through the institution of social measures, that are typical of the Welfare State, and subsequent reduction or extinction, concomitant to a war against poverty and drugs, and of ethnic-racial character, which practices constituted a neoliberal penalty, banalizing the incarceration.