Confinement spaces within the confinement. Analysis of a High Security Center for prosecuted youths in Argentina

Abstract

The analysis of confinement spaces presents itself as an interesting field of investigation to study the governing practices put on display in prisons. The delimitation of spaces of privilege, of common use or either of greater imposition of punishment, which are deployed based on the governing mechanisms that are put into work over the inmates, are organizing factors of a prison geography, shaped by social customs and practices that can only be identified through in situ observation. This paper aims to explore and describe a High Security Center for criminal youths, in the city of La Plata, state of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Its main goal is to inquire into the way in which the spatial and architectural dimension of the High Security Center constitutes an expressive dimension of the punitive rationality of the penal device. In order to do that, a qualitative methodology has been used, taking as reference primary sources such as field notes and interviews, which are the product of a two years field work. Some of the results of this research shed light over the intersections between different power practices that shape the governing of subjects in confinement, allowing to specially identify the place occupied by the functioning of a spatial organization within those dynamics.