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Background: The Latin American prison population has grown faster than anywhere else globally over the past two decades, reaching a total of 1.7 million people at any given time. However, research on mental health prevention and treatment interventions in Latin American prisons remains scarce. Aims: This study aimed to systematically review and synthesize research on prison mental health interventions conducted in the region. Methods: We used a two-stage scoping review design guided by the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis. Searches took place in December 2021 in nine databases using descriptors and synonyms. First, all prison mental health research in Latin America was retained. Secondly, using title and abstract screening, all research possibly related to interventions was retained for full text evaluation. Studies reporting interventions were assessed by country, language, institution, population, intervention type, intervention focus and outcomes. Results: N = 34 studies were included in this review. These were 13 case reports, seven expert consensus papers and 14 quantitative studies (four randomized controlled trials, nine cohort studies, one quasi-experimental study). Fourteen interventions were targeted at promoting prosocial behavior, seven studies each aimed to improve mental health and to treat substance use disorders. Six studies involved the treatment of sexual offending behavior, and 3 focused on reducing criminal recidivism. Psychoeducation (n = 12) and motivational interviewing (n = 5) were the most frequent intervention types studied. Promising data from trials showed that anger management, depression, substance use and reoffending could be successfully addressed through interventions. Conclusions: Implementation and effectiveness research of mental health interventions in Latin American prisons is scarce. Addressing mental health, substance use and prosocial behavior outcomes should be considered in future research. There is a particular dearth of controlled trials describing quantifiable outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transportation to remote islands has been a way that authorities have dealt with criminals since well before the birth of the modern state. What happens to those exiles once on the islands has varied greatly in different times and places. This paper explores the Galápagos plantation run from 1878 to 1904 by Manuel J. Cobos. His operation demonstrates that the patriarchal concept of the hacienda continued to play a key role in the disciplining of perceived criminality in Latin America in the late 19th century, outside of the roles of the military, the police, and penal institutions. The Galápagos example shows the overlaps and tensions between capitalist plantations and state penal colonies in their treatment of transported convicts in the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of the growing academic interest in party law in Latin America, we still lack a comprehensive account of how party regulatory frameworks evolved from the time of transitions to the present. This paper aims to fill this gap. In doing so, it makes a double contribution to the field of party regulation. On the one hand, it systematizes, for the first time, all the reforms adopted in Latin America over the last four decades. On the other hand, it introduces a theoretical innovation by using the concept of normative paradigms to analyze a process of legislative change. The main argument of this article is that a permissive paradigm was gradually but overwhelmingly replaced by a prescriptive approach, which conceives parties as semi-state institutions. This shift sheds light on the changing linkages between parties and the state in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls into question the universal application of the concept of populism. It points to how particular historical processes need to be taken into account when addressing the formation of populism in Latin American countries. Unlike more theorized cases as Argentinian or Mexican populism, I use the Ecuadorian case to show how critical historical contextualization of 21st-century populism requires analyzing the continuities and ruptures with sociological knowledge about a particular populism. Such an analysis of continuities and ruptures shows the theoretical convergences among Latin America as a region and the political dynamics of specific historical processes. I highlight how the conceptions of 21st-century Ecuadorian populism as a "passive revolution" or "authoritarian disfigurement of democracy" provide some theoretical tools for examining the historical process of Ecuadorian populism but ultimately fall short of critical analysis. In conclusion, I derived from the Ecuadorian case some elements for the analysis of Latin American populist projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]