The present work deals with the problems involving the imprisonment sentence in Brazil stemming from the discussion about sociohistorical process of social exclusion, and analyzes the suffering which overtakes the inmates by the privation of the power of construction of new perspectives in life. Revising studies on the current production of criminality and on the Brazilian prison system, it was concluded that prisons in Brazil operate as a mechanism that makes official the exclusion that already occurs towards the lower income classes.
Social exclusion; Inmate; Prison; Criminality