This book gathers the very best academic research to date on prison regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean. Grounded in solid ethnographic work, each chapter explores the informal dynamics of prisons in diverse territories and countries of the region -  Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic - while theorizing how day-to-day life for the incarcerated has been forged in tandem between prison facilities and the outside world. The editors and contributors to this volume ask: how have fastest-rising incarceration rates in the world affected civilians' lives in different national contexts?  How do groups of prisoners form broader and more integrated 'carceral communities' across day-to-day relations of exchange and reciprocity with guards, lawyers, family, associates, and assorted neighbors? What differences exist between carceral communities from one national context to another? Last but not least, how do carceral communities, contrary to popular opinion, necessarily become a productive force for the good and welfare of incarcerated subjects, in addition to being a potential source of troubling violence and insecurity?  This edited collection represents the most rigorous scholarship to date on the prison regimes of Latin America and the Caribbean, exploring the methodological value of ethnographic reflexivity inside prisons and theorizing how daily life for the incarcerated challenges preconceptions of prisoner subjectivity, so-called prison gangs, and bio-political order.

Sacha Darke is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at University of Westminster, UK, Visiting Lecturer in Law at University of São Paulo, Brazil, and Affiliate of King's Brazil Institute, King's College London, UK.

Chris Garces is Research Professor of Anthropology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador, and Visiting Lecturer in Law at Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar, Ecuador.

Luis Duno-Gottberg is Professor at Rice University, USA. He specializes in Caribbean culture, with emphasis on race and ethnicity, politics, violence, and visual culture.

Andrés Antillano is Professor in Criminology at Universidad Central de Venezuela, Venezuala.

Chapter 1. Spiritual Life and the Rationalization of Violence: The State Within the State and Evangelical Order in a Venezuelan Prison; Luis Duno-Gottberg (Rice University, United States)

Chapter 2. Criminalizing Youth in Latin America: Looking at the Politics of Punishment and Incarceration in Honduras; Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera (National University of Colombia-Bogota)
Chapter 3. The 'Cemetery of the Living': An Exploration of Disposal, (In)visibility, and Change-of-Attitude in Nicaraguan Prison; Julienne Weegels (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Chapter 4. Facing the First Command of Capital (PCC): Regarding Ethnography of Brazil's 'Biggest Prison Gang'; Karina Biondi (State University of Campinas, Brazil)
Chapter 5. Carceral Coloniality in Venezuela: Theorizing Beyond the Latin American Penal State; Cory Fischer-Hoffman (State University of New York-Albany, United States)
Chapter 6. The Bullet in the Glass. War, Death and the Meanings of Penitentiary Experience in Colombia; Libardo José Ariza and Manuel Iturralde  (University of the Andes, Colombia)
Section One: The Prison Underworld
Chapter 7. When Punishment is not Discipline. The Self-rule of Carceral Order in Venezuela; Andrés Antillano (Central University of Venezuela-Caracas)
Chapter 8. The Mata Escura Penal Compound: An analysis of the prison-neighborhood nexus in Northeast Brazil; Hollis Moore (University of Toronto, Canada)
Chapter 9. Fire Next Time: Gangs, State, and the Apocalyptic Image in Honduras; Jon Horne Carter (Appalachian State University, United States)
Chapter 10. 'My prisoners or yours?' Conflicts of authority and legitimacy among criminal justice, civil society, and criminal actors in in Brazil; Fiona MaCauley (Bradford University, United Kingdom)
Chapter 11. Prison Order, Violence, and Representation in Venezuela; Chelina Sepúlveda and Iván Pojomovsky (Central University of Venezuela-Caracas)
Section Two: The Informal Prison
Chapter 12. Everyday Survival and Construction of Brazilian Carcerality; Sacha Darke (University of Westminster, United Kingdom) and Oriana Hadler (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)
Chapter 13. Love Triages the State: Female Visitors and Survival in Guatemala's Prisons; Anthony W Fontes (University of Madison-Wisconsin, United States)
Chapter 14. 'He Beat Me': How Intimate Partner Violence Contributes to the Incarceration of Women in Peru; Stephanie Campos (National Research and Development Institute-New York, United States)
Chapter 15. 'Eat To Forget'. The Dangers of Food in San Pedro Prison (La Paz, Bolivia); Francesca Cerbini (State University of Ceará-Fortaleza, Brazil)
Chapter 16. Prison Authority as the Exposure, or the Concealment, of Sexual Violence; Kristen Drybread (University of Colorado-Boulder, United States)
Chapter 17. Ecuador's Prisons of Addiction: Treatment Centers amid Repressive Legal Frames; Ana Jácome (Latin American Faculty of the Social Sciences, FLACSO-Ecuador)
Conclusion.