Daniel Martos i García

Deporte entre rejas. ¿Algo más que control social?

Sport practices belong to the prison’s landscape. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge about the role they play in prisons ordinary life. Therefore, we developed an ethnographic study, mainly located in the sports hall of a Spanish prison, to understand exercise and sport meanings among inmates, workers, educators and monitors. Data indicate that social rehabilitation through sport is an illusion, although it is the official goal of imprisonment. Even so, participants assign different benefits to exercise and sport, especially inmates. Educative potential of self-control through sport and, mainly, distraction and compensation strategy to cope with boredom, time and confinement’s physical and mental problems are among them. Paper concludes that exercise and sport can play a symbolic ‘evasion’ and personal liberation, but are constrained by a context in which control and order are at the forefront of everything.