Dangerousness Across Borders: Criminology and Social Control in Brazil and Puerto Rico

My project, Dangerousness Across Borders: Criminology and Social Control in Brazil and Puerto Rico, examines how the concept of periculosidade (“dangerousness”), rooted in positivist criminology, was mobilized by states in Latin America to justify the surveillance and confinement of marginalized youth. Building on previous research, I originally planned to conduct archival work in Brazil, but due to travel uncertainties I redirected my CLACS funding to hire three research assistants in Florianópolis, who digitized 197 juvenile prison files from the Santa Catarina State Prison Archive. This corpus not only provided essential data for my dissertation but also contributed to the Marginal Archives project, which expands public access to these sources. With revised support, I also conducted in-person research at the Archivo y Biblioteca General de Puerto Rico, where I examined police and prison identification cards that shed light on how Puerto Rico, in coordination with U.S. authorities, constructed categories of dangerousness. These activities allowed me to achieve two key objectives: building a digital database of Brazilian cases and expanding the project into a comparative, transnational study. A central lesson learned is that research setbacks can lead to fruitful redirections, and that combining remote and on-site archival strategies can yield unexpected insights. My findings will support an article exploring the medicalization of crime across Brazil and Puerto Rico, while also contributing to broader debates on law, medicine, race, and surveillance in Latin America.