The limits of reason: deliberation and phronesis of correctional officers[Les limites de la raison : délibération et phronèse des agents correctionnels]

The objective of this article was to verify in the experience of correctional officers, in a maximum security prison complex, elements that characterize a framework of phrónesis evidence. Phrónesis was described in Aristotelian philosophy as the virtue of a practical order that presupposes deliberation in critical situations, where the rationality of agents is limited by very specific contexts of action. The notion of phrónesis clear new perspectives to understand rationality in contingent circumstances of organizational praxis. This research was undertaken from a micro-sociological analysis of the practices of the agents in prison work. Data were collected from interviews and triangulated with field observation and document analysis. The results of the research illustrate evidence of the phrónesis from the analysis of the experience of the agents in the containment of organized crime actions inside the complex and in the effects produced in the management from that experience.