(Re)interpreting the rehabilitation crisis as a defining feature of the contemporary prison: an approach to its causes and real possibilities

Abstract

This paper analyses the causes which have motivated the progressive displacement that the rehabilitation objective has experienced since the seventies. However, unlike those interpretations which focus their explanation on factors directly connected to prison reality and its proximities, the rehabilitation crisis and the resulting reconfiguration of the contemporary prison are here related to the emergence of a productive model whose growth no longer requires that individuals be inevitably transformed into workers, generating great tensions around the condition of citizenship and increasing levels of social exclusion that must be managed through different state policies. The author concludes affirming the need to develop resistances beyond the prison system which are oriented towards the achievement of an inclusive society.