The article makes a comparative analysis between the meanings of prison work and free work. For that purpose, it brings the experience of DETRAN-RS at applying management tools to the work of prison inmates serving sentences in open and semi-open regime. This is a pioneer initiative in the state. Such experience sought to approximate the labor reality of prison inmates to the reality of other workers in the institution. An action survey and a review of critical literature on the subject were performed. The conclusion is that the corporate world of the new economy does not favor the creation of links and identity among members, thus not being an adequate model of social reinsertion via stable work and adoption of a routine. Being closer to traditional bureaucracies, the DETRAN-RS structure offers such possibilities. The submission to control, assessment and pre-established norms, typical of classical management models and essential in the prison system, was positively evaluated by convicts and seen as a way of professional valorization.
prison work; flexible capitalism; meaning of work