POSTSCRIPT TO “CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON URUGUAYAN PRISONS”.
Months ago we published a text calling for a vision that would critically analyze the state of overcrowding and violence inside Uruguayan prisons and the style of “communication” by the official media. The final conclusion we wanted to reach was that the 
violence inherent to life within the state and capitalist systems needs prison and injustice to legitimize itself and subsist; that crime and prison is a product of inequality and the treatment is in and of itself dehumanizing, in the way we have to live our lives in society and much more so inside the prisons. It is urgent to take collective action to change our reality and never again to exercise this type of violence used by the state and capitalism.
We want to take this opportunity to correct a mistake we made at the time of producing the text and that we cannot let pass by, firstly to not fall into the trap of authoritarian language that is crystallized in the imaginary of everyday life, and secondly, in pursuit of intellectual honesty. With this postscript, we also wish to offer a first approach to a critical position on the concept of rehabilitation.
In the original publication to which this text refers we made the mistake of saying, “If someone has to be rehabilitated here it is us as a society”. With an innocent reading there would seem to be no problem, but the issue here is that the very concept of rehabilitation bothers us. Why? Because the concept of rehabilitation belongs to the thinking and language of the penitentiary system and authoritarian institutions. We understand that by using it we are somehow accepting its legitimacy in the social imaginary and that is something we fight against. But what is rehabilitation? Rehabilitation is a concept that presupposes a natural way of being and whoever must undergo it is a person who deviates from the correct ways. This assumption is the one shared by all the “re” policies (rehabilitation, reinsertion, reeducation) that work within the penitentiary system and other state and public-private institutions that are in charge of straightening out that person who within the current order of things can be considered a deviant.
This way of thinking that brings us the concept “re” invisibilizes the reality of the issue. We have already said that crime is a legal mechanism to defend the interests of capitalism and that of the social classes that commit it, only one receives the weight of the law. It is not strange to hear that when someone rich or politically active commits a crime it is said that they have made a mistake, but why are they forgiven and the poor are not? The answer in our opinion is that there are no real mistakes but a structural violence that pushes many and suits a few.
But what did we mean by “rehabilitating ourselves as a society”? The origin of the error is not what is of interest here, but if you pay attention you will realize why the writer fell into such a terrible euphemism and that is that the concept is confused with what we really meant: to change our perspective.
We believe that it is necessary that both the militant collectives and the society of which they are part change their perspective regarding the reality of prison and the system that encompasses it. To be able to fight injustice from its true root we must meditate on the very essence of crime and legality, which are always tools that power uses to dominate and segregate us, far from an innocence that limits dialogue and self-care because the issue that makes it possible for the state to exercise this violence lies in our current incapacity to defend ourselves from all the abuses (before, during and after) that we humans are capable of committing against each other and other species.
Having finished this text we can only say that the subject is far from being finished because this is an issue that touches all aspects of our social and individual life. We hope that in future publications we will continue to contribute to the discussion. Without further ado, we hope that this postscript has helped us to think about the issue and that we will be able to meet soon in the streets.
———-