Notes on the History of Prisons in the State of São Paulo

Abstract

This article seeks to briefly compilate the history on the penal executions in establishments throughout the current territory comprising the state of São Paulo, highlighting occurrences, which altered the way the state government and Society think about the act of punishing and the acceptable manners of doing so. Administrative evolutions and detainee care are characterized throughout the colonial era, the imperial period and the republic, with special attention to a circular tendency of humanization and hardening of penal policy. It is concluded that the current political moment favors a change in paradigm, which has established itself in 2007.