What is Recursivity

The development of information and communications technology (ICT) over the past few decades has been positively surprising. Prison development has also been surprising, in a negative way. Hardline policy positions towards crime and the expansion in the consumption of ICT products are contemporaneous. They are co-occurrences. What makes sense of this apparent contradiction is the way societies experience distinct dispositions depending on the issues they have to face. The same people are able to be optimistic, in relation to the positive use of computers, and pessimistic as to the possibility of the criminal-penal system being able to combat crime. Is it possible for society to experience a disposition in which punitiveness regarding prisoners is replaced by the hope of reintegration for those convicted of crime? The answer is: there can be a shift of the dominant disposition, but for that we must reshape the whole of this society into another.