Prisons and Crime in Latin America

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.

• 1: Introduction; 2, The Prison Explosion in Latin America; 3. Explaining the Prison Growth; 4. Drugs and Prisons; 5. Women Imprisonment and Violence in Latin America; 6. Justice Institutions in Latin America; 7. Life in Prison; 8. Hobbes in Prison; 9. Prison and the Outside World: The Fallacy of Separation; 10. Conclusions; Corrections and Criminal Policy.

'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