Prisões da fé: conversões evangélicas no contexto prisional e a relação entre interesses religiosos e condições de habitualidade no mundo do crime

Abstract

This thesis aims to understand the relationship between religion and prison from the evangelical conversion process in the Unidade Penal Regional de Palmas (UPRP), more specifically, what differentiates the group of individuals who convert to the evangelical religion in prison from the group that does not converts. We adopted Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social fields as a theoretical framework and Multiple Correspondence Analysis (ACM) as a methodology, which allowed us to objectify the prison camp reserved for UPRP evangelical and non-evangelical prisoners and identify its agents in a cloud factorial plan according to the distances and proximities existing between them, the social properties that structure them and the relationship with their religious positions. As a result of the research, it was possible to establish a connection between religious interests and conditions of habitualities in the world of crime, where factors such as religious affinity before arrest, influence of family and pastors and the level of seriousness of the infraction of the ethics of crime contribute to the decision to convert or not in prison. Four main relational trends emerged from this. Some individuals located on the left side of axis 1 tend to be occasional prisoners, thus defined as those belong to the world of work, and tend to convert for properly religious interests; those on the right side of this same axis tend to be habitual prisoners, linked to the world of crime, and tend not to convert. Individuals on the lower side of axis 2 tend to be habitual prisoners and tend to convert in self-preservationist interests; those above axis 2 tend to be occasional prisoners and tend not to convert. Among the main practical implications of this work is that of collaborating with regional development, as it has the potential to uncover a little-known reality and subsidize the formulation (or reformulation) of public politics for proper realization and execution of the sentence regarding freedom of belief and religious assistance.