ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the ideas and conceptions expressed, defended and disseminated by the Partido Republicano Rio-Grandense (PRR) about penal institutions and systems before the fall of the monarchy and the emergence of the republic. It is based on a variety of sources, such as reports from municipal and hygiene commissions, various journalistic texts, as well as four chronicles penned by Felicíssimo Manoel de Azevedo, an important PRR member, that were published in A Federação, the party’s official organ. This article seeks to demonstrate that the PRR’s political instrumentalization of the “penitentiary issue” ended up generating a “proto-penitentiary thought,” aided by the moment of resurgence of a civilizing discourse judged fundamental for the theoretical maintenance of the so-called “humanization of penal punishment.”
Keywords
Felicíssimo Manoel de Azevedo; Partido Republicano Rio-Grandense; History of Prisons; A Federação; Humanitarian Narrative