Mudanças na administração prisional: Os agentes penitenciários e a construção da ordem nas prisões de Minas Gerais.

The article analyses the routine practices and the way prison officers have worked to maintain discipline, security and order in prisons of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The penitentiary system has undergone drastic changes in the last years and has demanded a specific profile of individuals to compose its staff. The analysis was based on direct observations performed in eight prisons and interviews with the prison officers who work in them. The results reveal an increasingly bureaucratic prison environment and the professionalization of prison officers occurring through a military style of action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]