Families of detainees and prison order in Latin America

This article is concerned with the extended effects of imprisonment. It is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina, using archival work, participant observation and in-depth interviews with 52 people, including detainees and their families. The article breaks down the prison experience of detainees’ families into its multiple dimensions, in order to highlight their participation in the production of the prison order. The organisation of prison life, the family contribution to the support of the detainees and the functioning of the prison, and the conditioning that prison relations project on extra-prison social relations, outline a complex or at least multiple view of a phenomenon that appears ‘flattened’ or ‘linear’ in the hegemonic literature. In line with Latin American research over the last decade, the ethnography carried out in Santa Fe shows not only the leading role played by women relatives of detainees, but also the connections between this phenomenon and the growing feminisation of poverty observed in Latin America. Finally, the article emphasises one of the main findings of the research: the mechanisms through which relatives of detainees intervene in the prison space, actively participating in the production of order.