Passengers who don’t pay the fare: reflections on the connections between urban circulation and deprivation of liberty

Abstract

Spaces of detention have been increasingly thought not only as total institutions separated from urban life, but also through their flows, circulation, or porosity. These reflections range from the relations between the people who circulate inside and outside the prison to the way in which the administration of the juvenile detention center works. Based on ethnographic research carried out in a juvenile detention center, I was able to observe how this porosity can be thought not only through its static dimensions, but also with a focus on urban circulation, more specifically the route of a public transportation system. In this sense, in this article, I seek to reflect on the relationship between urban circulation, public security and the socio-educational system based on my interlocutors’ accounts related to a specific bus line that connects the South and North Zones of the city of Rio de Janeiro and sometimes ends up creating other points of connection: a prison for these adolescents, who represent themselves as passengers who do not pay the fare. Thus, I will deal in this text with issues related not only to social control and crime, but also to the circulation of certain groups through the city and their relationship with detention.