The Holistic Sense of Prison Phenomena in Venezuela:
II. Toward a Profound Unveiling of The "Background"

(Suárez Litvin, Roldan Tomasz)
Abstract

This is the second article of the trilogy devoted to the study of the sense of Venezuelan prison institutions. It shows how the research reported in the first article gives way to the central question presented in this paper: what are the conditions of possibility of our discomfort and dissatisfaction with the current situation in the Venezuelan prisons? The reflection on this question progresses by uncovering different ways of understanding the sense of prisons. These serve as hypothetical grounds of the moral intuitions that make the prisons problematical. As the reflection develops, it seems to indicate that what underpins the problematical nature of the prison problem is the same postmodern liberal order which, according to the first article of the trilogy, underpins prison schizophrenia. This poses some theoretical questions, which give way to the third article of the trilogy. Finally, the possibility of an indepth solution to the Venezuelan prison problem is discussed.

This article was published in Systems Practice and Action Research, Vol 12, Nº 1, 1999; pp. 95-114.