Re-examining the complexity evoked by the expression 'the penitentiary question,' I look to contributes to the development of approaches that favour confronting its contemporary paradoxes and new dimensions. Turning to the sociology of punishment, the political economy of penal systems, the analysis of discursive meanings and the paradigm of complexity, I take the penitentiary question to be a complex intersection between penal and social dimensions and policies in modern society. I propose a number of premises and strategic viewpoints in the endeavour to avoid the traps of a simplifying conceptualization of prison realities and/or tensions, seduced by a mythology of the 'good prison'.
Prison; Complexity; Prison system; Penitentiary question
