Brazilian authorities continuously fail to comply with international norms on minimal
conditions of incarceration. Brazil's prison population has risen ten-fold since the country's
return to democracy in the 1980s. Its prisons typically operate at double official capacity and
with 100 prisoners for each guard on duty. At the same time however the average Brazilian
prison is not as disorderly or its staff-inmate relations so conflictual as our established
theories on prison life might predict. This monograph explores the means by which Brazilian
prisons function in the absence of guards. More specifically the means by which prison
security and inmate discipline is negotiated between prison managers gangs and the wider
inmate body. While fragile and varied this historical tradition of co-produced governance has
for decades kept most prisons in better order and enabled most prisoners to better survive.
