Pathways to prison: bordering social inequalities through prison and state

Abstract

In the context of crime studies that link variables as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, it seems that issues of social inequalities are transversal, in both an attempt to understand the causes of crime and the performance of the criminal and social control institutions. Based on a qualitative study developed in Portugal, it is argued that the pathways to prison of foreign male and female individuals must be understood not only by the objective living conditions, which are a result of various social inequalities along their life trajectories, but as well as by the role that the criminal justice system itself plays, existing revealed dynamics of police corruption and special surveillance in certain social spaces. It is concluded that the objective living conditions and identity intersections co-structure the criminal involvement and imprisonment and that the state through its formal control institution reproduces social inequalities and creates borders of social vulnerability.