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Abstract
Since the return to democracy in the 1980s, the Federal government in Brazil promoted the democratic modernization of the criminal justice apparatus. However, the arrival of a post-neoliberal government to the federal administration at the beginning of the century took place simultaneously with the emergence of mass incarceration. Rather than readily blaming their penal policies for this development, the present work addresses aspects of subnational variation and different political rationalities for comprehending this increase in the prison population. The coexistence of neoliberal and post-neoliberal rationalities of governance around the country between 2007 and 2018 corresponded to significantly diverse trends in incarceration at the state level, in which neoliberal governments played a more prominent role. Besides, authoritarian punitiveness has acted as an obstacle to the modernization of crime and punishment practices and institutions throughout this period. The resurgence of authoritarianism as an autonomous political rationality in the 2018 elections reconfigured policies and attitudes in the field, mostly by reversing past modernizing efforts.

Traditional theoretical accounts in the sociology of punishment largely overlook the situation of crime control and mass incarceration outside Western democracies. In this sense, their explanatory power has a limited reach. It is fundamental to engage with different contexts for expanding the scope of this transdisciplinary field, while also rethinking its foundational canons. By thinking through the global-south, the present argument advocates the development of a decentred perspective to punishment and crime control. In a two-pronged approach, the article argues that peripheral countries have attempted to modernize their criminal justice apparatuses, while social control in Western democracies has increasingly adopted postcolonial features. The aim is not only to expand this scholarship by encompassing more diversity, but also to refine existing accounts through insights from other realities.

The democratic transition in Brazil witnessed the return of civil liberties and the emergence of a legal framework based upon respect for human rights and the adoption of extensive social entitlements. In recent years, the reduction of poverty and upward social mobility have also transformed the country's social structure. In spite of these welcome changes, however, crime and prison rates went through a steep upsurge during the same period, undermining many of these more positive social changes. A number of reasons underlie the emergence of this predicament, ranging from large structural shifts to the piecemeal adoption of harsher criminal laws. Enmeshed in these developments nonetheless there is also important institutional modifications in the configuration of the criminal justice system. The present argument seeks to understand how the recent thrust in the modernization of state institutions helped to create this situation of crisis. The expansion, densification, and standardization of the criminal justice apparatus has prompted its greater effectiveness and, thus, contributed to the current predicament of high crime rates and mass incarceration in the country.