Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the antagonistic sociality that takes place in families affected by parental imprisonment. It analyzes how families are the target of suspicion and care of a police rationality that aims to impede the reproduction of antisocial individuals by promoting a subject of prevention.

Paper long abstract:

The police look at the families of prisoners is infused with ambivalent feelings resulting from the paradoxical place they occupy. On the one hand, families—especially their minors—appear as collateral victims of the penal system; on the other, they represent a source of danger for society due to their potential to produce 'antisocial' behaviors. A grid of state visibility shapes a frame of antagonistic sociality in terms of criminality and social order in contemporary Chile. The inquiry argues that, as a result of the interrelation between policing, prevention, punishment, and correction in families affected by parental imprisonment, heterogeneous and eventually unexpected modes of subjectivation take shape entangled with local values, affects, and politics. It is in this context that this paper takes up the challenge of putting into practice an anthropology of lives opposed in order to analyze their interactions and discuss the mutual effects on their life worlds.