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The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America: Essays on Criminology, Prison Reform, and Social Control, 1830-1940. Edited by RICARDO SALVATORE and CARLOS AGUIRRE. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xxi, 279 pp. Cloth, $40.00. Paper, $14.95.
This is a welcome volume that brings a variety of approaches to understudied penitentiary and criminological institutions, theories, and practices in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Costa Rica. These authors examine why penitentiaries fascinated state builders, who expended prodigious resources to construct these monuments of industrial discipline amid agro-export economies. For reformers, despite the precarious enforcement of discipline within prisons and their limited capacity, penitentiaries were touchstones of civilization that distinguished fledgling central states from colonial and caudillo predecessors and strengthened their...