The Macro-Political Dimension of Santa Monica: Intertwined Co-governance, Interlegality and Prisoner-Delegates

Abstract

This chapter is the first of three sections which illustrate the empirical findings and concretise the theoretical arguments of the book. In this chapter, I explore the macro-political dimension of prison. I argue that Santa Monica operates through co-governance. I describe the formal and informal-legitimised order of prison and suggest that the managerial functioning is co-produced and co-financed. Thus, conviviality experienced during imprisonment is assured by both sets of actors: prison staff and prisoners. As Navarro and Sozzo (2020) highlight, co-governance does not exclude possible conflicts but puts on the centre the negotiations between staff and prisoners, and it has to be observed as a continuum between contestation and collaboration. I analyse the semiautonomous (Moore, 1973) role of prisoner-delegates, and, following the idea that governance is gendered (Hannah-Moffat, 2001), I demonstrate that the delegate's role is embedded with gender mandates, and their legitimacy is arguably more ambivalent and surreptitious than that of their peers in Peruvian men's prisons.Moreover, in dialogue with a legal pluralism perspective (Griffiths, 1986), I propose that prison is a site of interlegality (De Sousa Santos, 2002, p. 243) where national law and customary law superimpose and