PERSPECTIVES OF PUNISHMENT

DAVID GARLAND

FICHAMENTO

*INTRODUO

Instead of viewing punishment as a means to an end or a stock problem for

moral philosophy, sociologists and historians have begun to conceptualize
punishment as a social institution and to pose a series of questions that stem
from this approach. In place of questions about punishments effectiveness or
its justification, these writers have been asking, How do specific penal
measures come into existence? What social functions does punishment
perform How do penal institutions relate to other institutions? How do they
contribute to social order, or to state power, or to class domination, or to the
cultural reproduction of society? and What are punishments unintended
social effects, its functional failures, and its wider social costs? Punishment
is thus understood as a cultural and historical artifact that may be centrally
concerned with the control of crime but that is nevertheless shaped by an
ensemble of social forces and has significance and range of effects that reach
well beyond the population of criminals (GARLAND, 1991, p. 119).

A sociologia da punio transferiu o cerne de anlise de questes da ordem

da eficcia ou justificativas acerca do sistema punitivo, para a explorar os
alicerces sociais da punio, delinear suas implicaes e desvelar as
estruturas de ao social e significados presentes em teias culturais que
conferem s modernas formas de punio suas inmeras caractersticas
como funes. Formas e efeitos. (GARLAND, 1991, p. 119).

Ainda que compartilhando seu objeto de estudo, abordagem cientfica com os

estudos penolgicos, a sociologia da punio diferencia-se por seu parmetro
de anlise: observa as instituies a partir de seu exterior, para buscar
compreenso de seu papel enquanto um distinto conjunto que conforma um
processo social, situado no interior de uma ampla rede social. (GARLAND,
1991, p. 119-120).

() the penal system has an instrumental purpose, but also a cultural style
and an historical tradition, that shapes the way in which that objective is
pursued (GARLAND, 1991, p. 120).

Convenes sociais, recursos econmicos, dinmicas institucionais, e

argumentos polticos (GARLAND, 1991, p. 120).

Garland argumenta que, enquanto as convencionais abordagens penolgicas

e filosficas da punio aliceram-se em certos concepes de senso comum
acerca da espcie de instituio que representa a punio, bem como a que
propsitos sociais a mesma serve, uma sociologia da punio desenvolvida
propriamente deve informar aspectos sobre as foras sociais que condicional
processos penais e as inmeras consequncias sociais que, por sua vez, so
produzidas por estes processos. (GARLAND, 1991, p. 120).
Garland expe que, antes de dizer respeito a um unssono e unificado quadro
de pensamento, a sociologia da punio abarca uma gama de abordagens
tericas, perspectivas analticas e interpretaes concretas. Tal variedade,
ademais, no conformaria, de acordo com o autor, um quadro
necessariamente coerente ou compreensivo. posto que o que se apresenta,
em seu lugar, seria um conjunto interpretativo conflitivo, com perspectivas
delineando modelos de explanao sociolgica bastante diversos. Face a tal
situao, expe o autor, poder-se-ia efetuar uma eleio paradigmtica
possvel anlise, desconsiderando as inmeras outras formas possveis para
se proceder em uma pesquisa. No entanto, Garland defende o potencial
frutfero de uma interpelao construda no sentido oposto, calcada na busca
pela aproximao sinttica entre teorias, a fim de, nelas, buscar
complementaes mais do que contradies, bem como de isolar pontos
especficos de discordncia para serem resolvidas mediante novas anlises e
reflexes. Nesse sentido, o autor lana mo das tradies de Durkheim,
Marx, Foucault e Elias para, em uma espcie de bricolagem sociolgica,
destacar as diferentes contribuies e limitaes oferecidas por cada uma
delas para a anlise dos estudos modernos da pena e da punio
(GARLAND, 1991, p. 121).

*A PERSPECTIVA DE DURKHEIM

Durkheim insiste em dois pontos importantes. Primeiro, que existe uma

grande gama de indivduos partilhando uma sensao de envolvimento para
com o ato de punir e, portanto, demandando das instituies estatais sua
legitimidade e apoio social. Segundo, que apesar de todas as tentativas
voltadas a fazer da punio um processo racional, impassvel e utilitrio, a
mesma permanece marcada pelos sentimentos punitivos e reaes
emocionais que encontram-se na raiz da resposta concedida pela sociedade
ao crime. A punio, assim, no seria um mero mecanismo instrumental,
posto que seu impacto regulatrio e de impedimento face a transgressores ,
de acordo com o autor, sensivelmente limitado. No lugar de tal vis, o ato
punitivo representaria uma forma de as instituies penais demonstrarem a
fora material de valores sociais bsicos, restituindo a confiana coletiva na
integridade e no poder da ordem moral. Na concepo durkheimniana,
destarte, os rituais punitivos seriam aplicados com foco no no indivduo
ofensor, mas no corpo coletivo que sentiu sua segurana e seus valores
momentaneamente minados pelo ofensor e, a partir da punio a este,
observam o simulacro de sua moral ser novamente reerguido. (DURKHEIM).

Consideraes econmicas, ideologias polticas, desenvolvimentos

tecnolgicos, concepes cientficas, interesses profissionais.

As it turns out, all of the sociological perspectives that currently exist are
limited in this way because neither Durkheim nor any of the others intended to
develop a comprehensive theory of punishments internal and external
functioning. What is offered instead is an interpretive vision that, whatever its
limitations, offers a way of understanding important aspects of this complex
institution and connecting them to the other phenomena of social life, and it is
in this sense that is ought to be considered (GARLAND, 1991, p. 124).

Institutions such as law and punishment (...) are active, value-imposing

agencies whose practices play a crucial role in winning support for the
dominant morality (GARLAND, 1991, p. 125).

Declarao da punio, que continua assumindo a forma de um ritual pblico

e que permanece com seu foco no seio social e na ateno da mdia X
entrega da punio que ocorre por trs de portas fechadas e possui um nvel
de visibilidade muito menor.

The process of punishment do not necessarily promotes social solidarity.

Rather, they should be regarded as a ritualized attempt by legal officials to
reconstitute and reinforce already existing authority relations. Where there are
limits to that authority, or contests of authority, the effects of penal rituals may
be functional, dysfunctional, or simultaneously both (GARLAND, 1991, p.
126).

*A PERSPECTIVA MARXISTA

Specific penal practices are never determine solely by crime-control

objectives, nor are their social effects exclusively penological; penal
institutions are to be viewed in their interrelationship with other institutions and
with nonpenal aspects of social policy (GARLAND, 1991, p. 128 talking
about Rusche and Kirchheimer theory).

() this perspective should make us prepare to analyze punishment not in

the narrow terms of the crime problem but instead as one of the
mechanisms for managing the urban underclass, together with the social
welfare regulations, policing strategies, housing, schooling, and employment
policies. On this broader view, penal measures are shaped not just by
patterns of criminality themselves linked to the conditions of life of marginal
groups and their relation to other classes but primarily by governmental
perceptions of the poor as a social problem and the preferred strategies for
their treatment. These forms of treatment may involve aspects of caring and
provision as well as coercion and control, but the embeddedness of these
forms within wider strategies of rule is the point more crucial for their
comprehension (GARLAND, 1991, p. 134).

*A PERSPECTIVA FOUCAULTIANA

Foucaults account of the actual functioning of the prison stresses its hidden
role in the wider field of political domination and general social control rather
its declaring objectives of disciplining individuals. According to Foucault and
here he repeats the conventional wisdom the prison has consistently failed
in its penological objectives. Indeed, the defects of the prison its failure to
reduce crime, its tendency to produce recidivists, to organize a criminal milieu,
to render prisoners families destitute, and so forth have all been recognize
from as early as the 1820s. But this penological failure is reinterpreted by
Foucault as a kind of unspoken political success. The creation of a recidivist
delinquent class is deemed to be useful in a strategy of political domination
because it works to separate crime from politics, to divide the working classes
against themselves, to enhance the fear of prison, and to guarantee the
authority and power of the police. By creating a well-defined delinquent class,
the prison ensures that habitual criminals are known to the authorities and can
more easily be managed, while the powers of surveillance, which this groups
necessitates, can be easily used for wider political purposes. On this account,
the prison does not control the criminal so much as control the working class
by creating the criminal, and, for Foucault, this is the unspoken rationale for
the institutions persistence through nearly 200 years (GARLAND, 1991, p.
138).

Contemporary policy options such as selective incapacitation, and the

identification of career criminals, dangerous individuals, or even appropriate
cases for diversion rely on the same principles of assessment, diagnosis,
and prediction as did rehabilitative regimes (Floud and Young, 1981;
greenwood, 1982; von Hirsch, 19865) (GARLAND, 1991, p. 140-141).

The eclipse of rehabilitative ethos has done nothing to diminish the extensive
network of investigative, classifying, and normalizing practices that were
initially introduced under the rubric of helping the offenders but that now form
an essential part of the power-knowledge network of penal control
(GARLAND, 1991, p. 141).

*A PERSPECTIVA DE NORBERT ELIAS

The revisionist emphasis on the implicit strategies of control and domination

that operate through punishment has hidden the important role that cultural
values and sensibilities play in giving shape and limits to the penal measures
that may be deployed. Thus it may well be that hanging in chains, flogging
bodies, or exposing offenders to crowd violence on scaffold or pillory no
longer fit with the strategies of rule and the political relations of our time, and
so their disappearance can be understood in political terms. But it is also the
case that these measures would now be an affront to the normal sensibilities
of individuals who have grown up in modern Western societies, and the reality
and forces of these sensibilities would soon be felt by any ruler who tried to
reintroduce such barbaric methods within that cultural context (GARLAND,
1991, p. 142). NO

Pieter Spierenburg 1984b

A fim de entender estruturas e processos sociais, nunca suficiente estudar

um nico estrato funcional no campo social. Para serem realmente
entendidas, essas estruturas e processos exigem um estudo das relaes
entre os diferentes estratos funcionais que convivem juntos no campo social
e que, com a mais rpida ou mais lenta mudana nas relaes de poder
provocada por uma estrutura especfica desse campo, so no curso do tempo
reproduzida diversas vezes. (...) Investigar a totalidade do campo social no
significa analisar cada um de seus processos individuais. Implica, acima de
tudo, descobrir as estruturas bsicas, que do a todos os processos
individuais agindo nesse campo sua direo e marca especfica. (...) Em
ltima instncia, as fronteiras de tal estudo so determinadas pelas fronteiras
da interdependncia, ou pelo menos pela articulao imanente das mesmas
(ELIAS, 1994b, p. 239).

Ao tratar das transformaes scio-estruturais das quais emergiram

configuraes de burgueses e nobres, bem como de suas racionalizao
(uma manifestao do rumo em que a modelao de pessoas em
configuraes sociais especficas mudou em um determinado perodo), Elias
defende que mudanas desse tipo, porm, no se originam numa classe ou
outra, mas surgem, sim, em conjunto com as tenses entre diferentes grupos
funcionais no campo social e entre as pessoas que competem dentro deles.
(ELIAS, 1994b, p. 240).

Uma das caractersticas chave das sociedades modernas governadas

pelo Estado a que marca a intolerncia comunitria face violncia
enquanto aspecto pblico e cotidiano (GARLAND, 1991, p. 146). A despeito
de tanto, porm, a violncia no teria desaparecido da sociedade, mas
alocada em seus bastidores, pronta para ser utilizada quando necessrio:

A violncia fsica confinada aos quartis, de onde irrompe apenas em casos

extremos, em tempos de guerra ou sublevao, penetrando na vida do
indivduo. Como monoplio de certos grupos de especialistas, ela
habitualmente excluda da vida dos demais (ELIAS, 1994b, p. 200)

, tambm, mediante tal perspectiva que analisa-se a lgica prisional

enquanto universo afastado do dia-a-dia societrio, obliterado em suas
prprias formas de exercer e reproduzir a violncia seja ela institucional e
discursivamente legtima, ou desempenhada nos interstcios rotineiros de
apenados que se encontram no crcere.

() an understanding of the human impact of some contemporary

punishments make it clear that government policy still permits the infliction of
pain and public opinion still tolerates it so long as it takes a particular form. It
is well known to those with experience of imprisonment, for example, that
incarceration, particularly for long periods of time, can produce acute mental
and psychological suffering (Sykes, 1958; Cohen and taylor, 1972). It can also
bring about physical deterioration and the erosion of cognitive and social
skills, and it frequently results in serious emotional and economic distress for
the prisoners Family. But because these pains are mental and emotional
rather than physical, because they are corrosive over an extended period
rather than an immediate, because they are removed from public view, and
because they are legally disguised as a simple loss of liberty, they do not
greatly offend our sensibilities and they are permitted to form a part of public
policy. In keeping with the demands of a civilized society, the experience of
pain is ushered behind the scenes whether this is behind the walls of a
prison, or behind the front with which prisoners conceal their emotional
distress. The crucial difference between corporal punishments such as long-
term imprisonment that are routinely used, is not a matter of the form which
that violence takes, and the extent to which it impinges on public sensibilities.
Modern sensibilities display a definite selectivity. They are highly attuned to
perceive and recoil from certain acts of violence, but at the same time, they
have particular blind spots, or sympathetic limitations, so that other forms are
less clearly registered and experienced. Consequently, routine violence and
the suffering of others can be tolerated on condition that it is discreet,
disguised, or somehow removed from view. Because most of the public does
not hear the anguish of prisoners and their families, because the discourses
of the press and of popular criminology present offender as different and less
than fully human, and because penal violence is generally sanitized,
situational, and of low visibility, the conflict between our civilizes sensibilities
and the often brutal routines of punishment is minimized and made more
tolerable. Modern punishment is institutionally ordered and discursively
represented in ways that deny the violence which continues to inhere in its
practices (GARLAND, 1991, p. 149-150).

As with other signs of brutishness, the sight of violence, pain, or physical

suffering has become highly disturbing and distasteful to modern sensibilities.
Consequently, it is minimized wherever possible. And where violence does
continue to be used, it is usually removed from the public arena and sanitized
or disguised in various ways, often becoming the monopoly of specialist
groups such as the army, the police, or the police staff that conduct
themselves in an impersonal, professional manner, avoiding the emotional
intensity that such behavior threatens to arouse (GARLAND, 1991, p. 146).

O ato de trinchar, conforme demonstram os exemplos, outrora constituiu

parte importante da vida social da classe alta. Depois, o espetculo passou a
ser julgado crescentemente repugnante. O trincho em si no desaparece,
uma vez que o animal, claro, tem que ser cortado antes de ser comido. O
repugnante, porm, removido para o fundo da vida social. Especialistas
cuidam disso no aougue ou na cozinha. Repetidamente iremos ver como
caracterstico de todo o processo que chamamos de civilizao esse
movimento de segregao, este ocultamento para longe da vista daquilo
que se tornou repugnante. A curva que ocorre do trincho de grande parte do
animal ou do animal inteiro, passando pelo avano do patamar da
repugnncia vista dos animais mortos, para a transferncia do trincho a
enclaves especializados por trs das cenas, constitui uma tpica curva
civilizadora (ELIAS, 1994a, p. 128).

De acordo com David Garland, a anlise supra colacionada de Elias no

apenas sintetiza grande parte da discusso que o mesmo constri, como
tambm sugere a relevante aproximao entre os padres gerais
desenvolvidos por Elias, e a histria das formas punitivas. (GARLAND, 1991,
p. 147).

Punishments can never be fully explained in terms of their instrumental

purposes, their control potential, or their economic and political advantage
because, as Eliass work shows, such possibilities will Always be shaped and
limited by cultural and psychic forces that define the basic contours of
possibility in the realm of penal policy (GARLAND, 1991, p. 148).
 *POR UMA ABORDAGEM MULTIDIMENSIONAL

Durkheim: punio como um mecanismo moralizante;

Marx: punio como um componente das regras de classe;
Foucault: punio como um exerccio de poder;
Elias: punio como uma forma cultural decretada;

Se extremamente difcil abarcar, em uma pesquisa cientfica, tudo o

que foi intelectualmente desenvolvido e encontra-se documentalmente
disponvel sobre o tema eleito, tampouco h no que diz respeito s
informaes das quais se lana mo como sobrepor todas as teorias e
concepes que delimitam o paradigma escolhido sobre o objeto de exame
em questo. Isso, porque, a fim de constituir uma espcie de mosaico
coerente acerca das relaes de poder no interior do universo carcerrio
especificamente no que recai na anlise do crime organizado e nas faces
prisionais tomar diferentes abordagens em totalidade, ou mesmo mediante
fragmentos descontextualizados, resultaria em uma estratgia facilmente
incompatvel e ambgua em suas premissas, conceitos e focos de estudo.
No entanto, ainda que se reconhea a impossibilidade de coeso
terica profunda a partir de uma metodologia ecleticamente
descomprometida, o pluralismo analtico no deixa de conceder espao a
uma relevante fora explanatria, calcada na disposio de recorrer a
mltiplas perspectivas e construir uma elucidao multidimensional do
fenmeno estudado (GARLAND, 1991, p. 152). Nesse sentido, David
Garland, ao defender uma abordagem diversificada para a sociologia da
punio, aludiu:

() these different interpretations might be played off against each other

and against the factual research evidence that they help generate in such a
way as to overlay them, build them up, and use each one to correct and refine
the others. Proceeding from one explanatory perspective to another, it
becomes clear that each one asks slightly different questions about the
phenomenon of punishment, each pursues a different aspect, reveals a
different determinant, and outlines a different connection. Sometimes, of
course, different theorists do address the same issue, only to interpret it in
different ways (...) in such case, one needs to argue out this disagreement
and resolve it in favor of the best explanation or else develop an alternative
account that improves them both. At other times, however, theoretical
disagreement may, on closer inspection, turn out to be less substantive than it
first appears (GARLAND, 1991, p. 152).

Thus, what appears to be a direct contradiction can be viewed as a difference

of interpretive focus and theoretical concern (). Seen in this way, as
interpretations grounded in different aspects of a differentiated process, the
question should no longer be, Which one is correct ()? Instead, we should
enquire how the different tendencies that they describe interact with one
another, how these conflicts are managed, and what effects these tensions
have on the modern process of punishment (GARLAND, 1991, p. 153).
 Em alguns casos, possvel que um terico identifique, com sucesso,
aspectos que escapem s demais teorias desenvolvidas e estas, por sua
vez, podem efetuar a mesma contribuio de forma particular ou, ento, em
termos mais amplos e gerais, sem, no entanto, abarcar o que j fora ou ser
acrescentado posteriormente. interessante, no interior de tal vis, de que
forma estes diferentes aspectos e elementos se encaixam, com fins de
formar um complexo e inteiramente diferente todo. Ao mesmo tempo, o
exerccio aludido permite-nos entender com mais preciso a diversidade de
interpretaes construdas para suportar a anlise de certos fenmenos
como o caso das faces e reconhecer a possibilidade interpretativa
multifacetada como, em alguns aspectos, complementar e mutualmente
confirmatria, ao invs de mutualmente excludente (GARLAND, 1991, p. 153-
154).

OLHAR MARCEL MAUSS 1967, p. 78: NECESSIDADE DE SNTESE E

CONSOLIDAO DE PERSPECTIVAS.

The theoretical conclusion that these considerations suggest is that a

pluralistic, multidimensional approach is needed if we are to understand the
historical development and present-day operation of the penal complex
(GARLAND, 1991, p.154).

It should be a sociology that strives to present a rounded, completed image: a

recomposition of the fragmentary views developed by more narrowly focused
studies. () Instead of searching for a single explanatory principle, we need
to grasp the facts of multiple causality, multiple effects, and multiple meaning
(GARLAND, 1991, p.154).

We need to realize that in the penal realm as in all social experience

specific events or development usually have a plurality of causes that interact
to shape their final form, a plurality of effects that may be seen as functional
or nonfunctional depending on ones criteria, and a plurality of meanings
which will vary with the actors and audiences involved though some
meanings (or, for that matter, cause and effects) may be more powerful than
others. The aim of analysis should always be to capture that variety of
causes, effects and meanings and trace their interaction, rather than to
reduce them all to a single currency (GARLAND, 1991, p.155).

For practical purposes, the kind of knowledge that is most useful is detailed,
specific, local knowledge, focused on a particular problem, or institution, or
policy question and informed about the specific cultural, political and
penological circumstances that apply (GARLAND, 1991, p.155).

() only empirical research can determine how these conditioning

circumstances come together at a particular moment to shape a course of
action or define a particular event. Theory should be a set of interpretative
tools for guiding and informing empirical inquiry not a substitute for it
(GARLAND, 1991, p.156).

*A PUNIO COMO INSTITUIO SOCIAL

 Ver Garland, 1990a: Punishment and Modern Society.

Neither the prison, nor any other penal institution, rests solely on its ability to
achieve such instrumental ends. Despite recurring hopes and the
exaggerated claims of some reformers, the simple fact is that no method of
punishment has ever achieved high rates of reform or of crime control and
no method ever will. All punishments regularly fail in this respect because,
as Emile Durkheim and others have pointed out, it is only the mainstream
processes of socialization (...) that are able to promote proper conduct on a
consistent and regular basis. Punishment, so far as control is concerned, is
merely a coercive backup that is often unable to do anything more than
manage those who slip through these networks of normal control and
integration. Punishment is fated never to succeed to any great degree
because the conditions that do most to induce conformity or to promote
crime and deviance lie outside the jurisdiction of penal institutions
(GARLAND, 1991, p. 158).

In an era when corporal punishment has become uncivilized, and open

violence unconscionable, the prison supplies a subtle, situational form of
violence against the person that enables retribution to be inflicted in a way
that is sufficiently discreet and deniable to be cultural acceptable to most of
the population (GARLAND, 1991, p. 159).

Prison is not lenient, nor is losing its violence (p. 159, penultimate
paragraph).

Nor is there any need to argue that the prisons failures are somehow
useful as Foucault and others do. The fact that prison frequently reinforces
criminality and helps produce recidivists is not a useful consequence desired
by the authorities or part of some covert strategy. It is a tolerated cost of
pursuing other objectives such as retribution, incapacitation, and exclusion
and is accepted in the same reluctant way that government absorb the high
financial costs entailed in the frequent use of imprisonment. So long as such
costs appear to the authorities and to the public to be outweighed by the
desirability of imprisoning offenders (and this desire has become an
established element within public beliefs, institutional frameworks, and social
traditions), then the prison remains a functional institution and neither a
puzzle nor an anachronism (GARLAND, 1991, p. 159-160).

REFERNCIAS

GARLAND, David. Sociological Perspectives on Punishment. Crime and

Justice, Chicago, vol.14, 1991, p. 115-165.

ELIAS, Norbert. O processo civilizador. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Ed., vol
1, 1994a.
ELIAS, Norbert. O processo civilizador. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Ed., vol
2, 1994b.