New Punitiveness on the Move: How the US Prison Model and Penal Policy Arrived in Colombia

Within the neocolonial context of ‘Plan Colombia’ in the early 2000s, agents of the US Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) took position in the heart of the Colombian penitentiary administration to lead a reform based on the US ultra-punitive penal regime. This paper analyzes how the reform was set up on the ground, shedding light on the partially divergent
expectations of both governments. Drawing on recent literature on the mobility of policies and built forms, the paper argues that the introduction of US-inspired prisons in Colombia is a striking case where a mobile policy and a traveling architectural type coincided and complemented each other.