The changing scale of imprisonment and the transformation of care : the erosion of the ‘Welfare Society’ by the ‘Penal State’ in contemporary Portugal

Abstract

Portugal has been depicted as a “Welfare Society” where the shortcomings of the support provided by an incipient Welfare State are absorbed by informal social networks that provide care on a personal basis. The strength of these ties is also what has led to consider the “poverty” observed in Southern European contexts as specific and different from the “exclusion” emerging in late capitalist societies. While acknowledging the ongoing importance of these networks of support, I will document a situation where their present erosion is partly a by-product of the workings of a growing penal State. Current phenomena of massive incarceration are changing both the face of prison institutions and of the poverty-stricken urban territories where imprisoned populations now come from. This puts new kinds of pressure on traditional forms of organising support. Horizontal, mutuality-type systems of care are discontinued or become less viable, gradually giving way to vertical, top-down, State-only managed systems of support.