This paper analyzes the problem of the order and control production in Brazilian prisons, using the historical and sociological perspectives, and brings the hypotheses that, in Brazil, two modalities of construction of order and control in the prisons happen together. One of them, minoritary, is based on the State's prerogative of daily prisional administration. The other regards the negotiation of the prison pacification between the State and the prisoners' leaderships. Although, in the first case, the prerogative of the State can be linked to the appropriate institutional conditions and, in the second (negotiation between the State and the prisoners' leaderships) to such precarious conditions of the prisons, as overcrowding, reduced number of penitentiary agents, the analysis pointed out that both modalities translate forms of relationships and social interactions historically produced among the State and society, that go to the foundation of the Republic, recreated through the social actors' habitus, not limiting exclusively to the social space of the prisons.
prisons; State; penitentiary agents; control; order