EVASION: Prison Escapes and the Predicament of Incarceration in Rio de Janeiro

This article examines Brazil's project of incarceration through the figure of evasion (evasão)—the act of escaping prison custody, often temporarily. Evasion traces a path across the borders of captivity and freedom, as people routinely flee confinement, only to return of their own accord. I position both prisons and evasion as part of an ongoing history of, and tension between, Black fugitive life and emancipation in Brazil and the Americas. I argue that while evasion offers no clear exit from the punitive edge of the law, it produces another mode of inhabiting the time and territory of incarceration. With a focus on two incarcerated Black travestis, I outline some of these evasive movements and demonstrate the fault lines that they reveal—both within the prison system's own claims to legitimacy and in the concepts that we bring to bear on incarceration.