Call for Papers – Dossier “New Prison Flows: Economies, Politics, and Affectivities”

2026-03-27

Dossier “New Prison Flows: Economies, Politics, and Affectivities” – RBCCRIM No. 217 (Nov/Dec)

With the aim of fostering scientific debate and knowledge production, the Editorial Team of RBCCRIM hereby announces the call for scientific articles to be published in issue No. 217 (Nov/Dec) on the theme: “New Prison Flows: Economies, Politics, and Affectivities.”

Guest Editors:

Scope and Rationale:

Prison systems have long occupied a central place in both Brazilian and international public and academic debate through different phenomena: mass incarceration, the emergence of criminal groups operating nationally and internationally beyond prison walls, and violence and torture expressed in massacres of confined persons. At the intersection of these phenomena, and building upon a body of previous studies, we understand the prison system as part of a broader apparatus for population management that generates and regulates flows of people, goods, and information, with diffuse effects on social life. Connected to police forces, criminal justice institutions, criminal collectives, and other state and non-state agencies, this apparatus actively participates in the production and reproduction of inequalities and discrimination based on class, race, gender, generation, and territory in diverse local contexts within the contemporary world.

From this perspective, the thematic dossier “New Prison Flows: Economies, Politics, and Affectivities” welcomes submissions that seek to update the debate on the different ways in which distinct social groups experience and produce flows and mobilities within, outside, and across prisons. To explore this theme, the dossier aims to gather and publish original articles that make effective advances in relation to at least one of the following research axes:

(i) Experiences and political practices of incarcerated persons, formerly incarcerated persons, and family members, as well as studies on how these prison and prisoner movements generate and rely upon affective, protective, caregiving, power, and market networks that operate across state, national, and international borders.

(ii) The ways in which the “prison system” is incorporated into public justifications and policies of “development,” expanding through discourses that link the promotion of security to employment, public and private enterprise, while simultaneously contributing to the production and regulation of illegal markets amid violent conflicts involving criminal and police collectives.

(iii) The administrative sphere, with particular attention to tactics of control and “the management of suffering” (such as new militarized political technologies of discipline); changes in relations between prison administration and the justice system; and, finally, power relations between these state agencies and prisoner collectives and family movements.

(iv) We encourage the submission of studies grounded in diverse methodological approaches, ranging from those based on state data to those founded on ethnographic research, including dialogues established through extension activities and activism with people who live within, shape, traverse, and navigate the networks and flows of the carceral apparatus.

Submission deadline: June 10, 2026 

Submission guidelines:

Articles must be registered and submitted through the online system:
https://publicacoes.ibccrim.org.br/index.php/RBCCRIM/about/submissions

Submissions must comply fully with the Editorial Policy of RBCCRIM; otherwise, they may be preliminarily rejected. All manuscripts will be evaluated through a double-blind peer review process.

The editorial team of RBCCRIM may forward articles submitted under the general continuous-flow call that address themes related to one of the dossiers for joint evaluation; texts already approved and awaiting publication that deal with the topic of a dossier may also be included in it.

Any surplus of approved articles exceeding the page limit of the issue, given that this is both a digital and printed publication, will be scheduled for publication in subsequent issues of RBCCRIM, without prejudice to the authors.