Citizenship and prisoners in Chile

Abstract

This work addresses the links between, by the one hand, the prisoner and the citizen, and, by the other hand, the empirical study of Chilean carceral reality. We hold that citizenship must be understood as an inclusive status in the community associated to the effectiveness of civil, political, and social rights. But, analyzing different aspects of Chilean carceral reality, result clear that prisoners aren’t citizens, but confined subjects in a space conceived to degrade their subjectivity. To get to this conclusion, we describe the way in which some carceral practices, linked to the conditions and requirements for obtaining anticipated freedom, the establishment of social links with outside world, the development of a job, and the exercise of voting right, express the existence of a penitentiary regime that denies and prevents the development of a full citizenship of prisoners.