THE ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS OF PRISON IN THE EXPANDED REPRODUCTION OF CAPITAL: GENERAL CONCERNS ARISING FROM THE PARTICULARITY OF THE PRISON SYSTEM IN MINAS GERAIS

Abstract

In unveiling its social relations of production, we raise the following question: what are the economic functions of the prison in 21st century Brazil? In order to understand them, we analysed the Capital-Labour relationship within prison walls. We carried out bibliographical research, document analysis, interviews and systematic observation in MG prison units. The data was analysed using historical materialism as its onto-epistemic principles. By apprehending the movement of reality, we pointed out that the essence of the prison system's being is punishment in the form of deprivation of liberty. This form of punishment allows prisons to fulfil four economic functions: locus of production of value and more value - within the parameters of public-private partnerships - through the supposed constitution of human dignity through labour; element that establishes, in the intra-capitalist struggle for the appropriation of more value, a competitive advantage for certain groups of capitalists made possible by the operation of valorisation according to an organic composition of capital intensively sustained by the exploitation of labour power to the detriment of investments in constant capital; a mechanism that produces an incarcerated reserve army; and, a mechanism that cheapens the value of labour power in the particularity of prison.