State form, labour market and penal system

Abstract

Around the turn of the 19th century, Vincent van Gogh painted - to subsequent international renown - his famous picture ‘The Round of the Prisoners’. It presents a well-known image: a circle of prisoners that completely embraces the perimeter space of a prison courtyard. This circular vision is composed by people who truly seem to be moving around, painted by a magic hand. One century later, we can think about another circular view, rather less artistic. The new millennium presents a terrifying figure: according to the most rigorous and official data (from the UN), there are at present about 8,700,000 prisoners all over the world. Nowadays, this human contingent can form another ‘round’, another circular view: such a number could go twice around the world. A gloomy and hard vision for a sensitive artist: What has happened? What is going on?