Drawing on a large collection of prison and administrative records archived at Peru’s Ministry of Justice, Aguirre offers a detailed account of the daily lives of men incarcerated in Lima’s jails. In showing the extent to which the prisoners actively sought to influence prison life, he reveals the dynamic between prisoners and guards as a process of negotiation, accommodation, and resistance. He describes how police and the Peruvian state defined criminality and how their efforts to base a prison system on the latest scientific theories—imported from Europe and the United States—foundered on the shoals of financial constraints, administrative incompetence, corruption, and widespread public indifference. Locating his findings within the political and social mores of Lima society, Aguirre reflects on the connections between punishment, modernization, and authoritarian traditions in Peru.
Carlos Aguirre is Associate Professor of History at the University of Oregon, Eugene. He is the author of Agentes de su propia libertad: Los esclavos de Lima y la desintegración de la esclavitud, 1821–1854. He is the coeditor of several books, including Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society since Late Colonial Times, also published by Duke University Press.