The character of penal control in Latin America

Abstract

While imprisonment is often referred to in Englis-speaking countries as ‘doing time’, in Venezuela this phrase is never used; people speak of ‘discharging the sentence’. This linguistic difference is a useful starting point for a reflection on cultural differences in the character of penal control. In this article, we examine the administration of sentence remissions in a Venezuelan prison during the six years following the enactment of the Sentence Remission Law (1993). Contrary to the active role envisioned by that law, penal bureaucracy assumed a passive role, converting remissions into a claims system for prisoners. Such claims were linked inefficiently to opportunities for early or full release, leading some offenders to spend more time than necessary in prison. Nonstandardized procedures for factoring remissions into the proportion of time served, together with frequent errors in date computation, also injected a random element into the flow of time. Time served in prison was therefore jointly determined by the offender's abilities as a claimant and by the random operation and errors of the penal timekeeping system. Remissions set the stage for a game of chance that is antithetical to the regularity, predictability and immutability that supposedly characterize penal sanctions.