“São os evangélicos que seguram essa cadeia, se não fossem eles, quem iria converter os mauzão?”: considerações sobre o papel do “proceder evangélico” na prisão

Abstract

The present research deals with the discussion about Christian religiosity in prison, as a possibility of guiding discourse of individual and collective conduct. The presence of religious of Christian confessions in penal institutions demonstrates the importance of this segment in the social dynamics of prison and clearly evidences the differences between the behavior of non-religious detainees and those who profess Christian religiosity, especially evangelical. In this sense, the research, carried out at Professor Ariovasdo de Campos Pires Penitentiary, in Juiz de Fora, deals with the specificities of the conduct adopted by detainees converted to evangelical religiosity, its influence on the social dynamics of the prison and the daily life of the relationships that are developed there. For this purpose, I use two main concepts: that of "proceeding" - which designates a complex number of rules created by and followed or not by detainees - as elaborated by Marques (2009) - and that of "religious conversion", used in the sense of worldview change of the faithful. I observed that, from the conversion, the detainee would go through a subjective moral reform that reflects in his interaction with the collective and, thus, would follow up Christian precepts and values in form of a morally acceptable conduct, resulting in "evangelical conduct", in other words, a kind of code of conduct followed by religious prisoners. Detainees who adhere to such "proceeding" are subjected to intense vigilance (both by detainees themselves and by officials in general) as a way of testing their faith, so that they cannot commit any contravention, which leads us to a comprehension that there is a certain notion of religious morality that guides both those who watch and those who are watched. Thus, religious "proceeding" would consist of a practice or conduct that is oriented by morality – Christian word. The research was carried out at Professor Ariosvaldo de Campos Pires Penitentiary, Juiz de Fora.