This paper aims to analyse legal sensibilities in the prisons of the Federal District, Brazil, exploring its associations with the native categories rights, privileges, rules and punishments and the connections between these local practices and legislation. The reflections presented in this text are the result of an ethnographic research carried out in the local prisons. The analysis revealed that these conceptions of justice are a central dimension of incarceration and that the inmates frequently formulate such conceptions as experiences of injustice that characterize forms of disrespect that deny their dignity and identity. It pointed out, otherwise, instances of production and enforcement of norms that convey a unique conception of justice
– marked in its essence by an authoritarian trace – which characterizes Brazil’s punitive culture.