Mass Media has a leading role in the construction of social symbols, values and practices. To identify the images of prisoners and prisons, in this article, we focus on the discourses of the Peruvian written press about the collective actions (categorized as riots) of prisoners in the context of COVID-19. Through critical discourse analysis, we analyze 81 notes of the seven most-read journals in Peru which inform about the first collective claim actions that occurred in four prisons: Río Seco, Picsi, Castro Castro and Anexo Chorrillos. The results are organized into three axes: (a) Explanation of the diaries about collective claim action; (b) Men's prisons: Collective claim action defined as riots; and (c) Women's prisons: Collective claim action defined as non-riots. We argue that the notes reproduce the image of prison as a punishment institution, with a tendency to delegitimize collective actions and to portray prisoners as subjects propelled by emotions with no possibility to establish a dialogical encounter. Also, discourses are embedded with stereotypes of crime and gender. Mass media informs through the simplification of the prison system, providing unidimensional images of prisons and prisoners. This makes it difficult to create holistic views that aid to understand the hindering and claims for prisoners' rights in order to establish processes of dialogue to construct alternative resolutions to violence.

Un aumento exponencial de la población penitenciaria en las últimas décadas da luces de un giro punitivo que potenció una crisis del sistema penitenciario y ubica a las personas privadas de libertad como grupo vulnerable frente a problemáticas como la emergencia sanitaria por COVID-19. En América Latina esta vulnerabilidad aumenta dado el hacinamiento y condiciones precarias de vida dentro de las prisiones. El presente trabajo recupera voces invisibilizadas dentro del sistema penitenciario y desde una metodología cualitativa, se analizan acciones de reclamo de mujeres privadas de libertad en una prisión de Lima-Perú durante los primeros meses de la emergencia sanitaria. Se sostiene que las mujeres privadas de libertad se posicionan para reclamar el abandono del Estado desde tres ejes autoidentificatorios: 1. El sentido de colectividad; 2. La resocialización enmarcada en la lógica de la categorización penitenciaria; y 3. Su rol como reproductoras de cuidado. Se concluye que estas son estrategias de despliegue de agencia y acciones propositivas por parte de las mujeres encarceladas.