Vigilancia Y Disciplina: Análisis Desde Foucault Para Ayudar A Mitigar El Fenómeno De La Reincidencia En Colombia.

Abstract

This research explores how disciplinary power, understood through Michel Foucault’s perspective, shapes criminal recidivism within Colombia’s penitentiary system. The analysis follows a qualitative and hermeneutic approach, which makes it possible to engage not only with conceptual frameworks but also with the meanings and lived experiences surrounding punishment and surveillance. The inquiry is organized into four interconnected chapters. The first two provide the theoretical foundation and examine Foucauldian thought on mechanisms of control, punitive practices, and processes of social normalization. The third chapter turns to the institutional reality of the Colombian prison system, showing how these mechanisms, combined with the fragility of resocialization policies, ultimately reinforce the exclusion of individuals after their release. The fourth chapter adopts a reflective and propositive tone, focusing on the creation of strategies to reduce recidivism based on an ethics of state responsibility and a pedagogy of freedom that recognizes the person as capable of transformation and worthy of dignity. From this standpoint, the study proposes alternatives to reimagine the prison as a space for education, support, and social reconstruction, instead of perpetuating a purely punitive logic that hinders human reintegration. The study concludes that reducing criminal recidivism in Colombia requires replacing the prevailing punitive rationality with an ethical and educational one that restores meaning to justice and to human dignity.