Abstract

MONTEVERDE SANCHEZ, Alessandro; CASTRO VALDEBENITO, Hugo Jose  and  SAAVEDRA AVILA, Juan. Models, tendencies and everyday life in the early stages of the Penitentiary of Santiago, Chile. 1843-1860. Diálogos rev. electr. hist [online]. 2018, vol.19, n.1, pp.69-101. ISSN 1409-469X.  http://dx.doi.org/10.15517/dre.v19i1.30096.

During the first decades of the XIX century, Chile faced a critical political debate in relation to the reform of the penitentiary and punitive system of the young state. This debate sought to stablish legislation that would eliminate itinerant impresonment and a number a vices and endogenous issues of the facilities used as jails troughout the country. In those years a moral transformation of criminals was sought through penitentiary treatment. This “treatment” consisted in combining two aspects, the first one was a modular confinement system from the habitation of a panoptical building with a code of internal cohabitation based on absolute silence; and the second one, a mixture between religious instruction and laboring in workshops. The idea was to follow the examples of the penitentiary treatments developed during the last decades of the XVIII century and the first decades of the XIX century mainly in the United Stated of America and Europe. The political and intelectual elite of Chile backed the reform by raising political debate through exhibitions and recommendations, which later materialized in the drafting of the law for the Prison of Santiago in 1843. In the following article we carried out an historical perspective analysis about this first period of debates emphasizing the type of penitentiary treatment adopted in the implementation of the Penitentiary of Santiago. These elements are contrasted with documentary records which show the internal regime and daily life of the Penitentiary of Santiago between 1858 and 1860 under the administration of an important actor in the reform of the jail system in Chile: the Superintendent Waldo Silva Algüe.

Keywords : Prisons; Penitentiarypopulation; Prisoners Chile.

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