Rick Wakeman: "There have always been certain 'careers' that have fascinated the public, newspapers, and the media in general. Such include musicians, actors, sportsmen, police, and not surprisingly, the people who give the police their employment: The criminal. For the man in the street, all these careers have one thing in common: they are seemingly beyond both his reach and, in many cases, understanding and as such, his only association can be through the media of newspapers or television. The police, however, will always require the services of the grass, the squealer, the snitch, (call him what you will), in order to assist in their investigations and arrests; and amazingly, this is the area that seldom gets written about."

The Primeiro Comando do Capital (PCC) is a Sao Paulo prison gang thatsince the 1990s has expanded into the most powerful criminal network inBrazil. Karina Biondi's rich ethnography of the PCC is uniquely informedby her insider-outsider status. Prior to his acquittal, Biondi's husband wasincarcerated in a PCC-dominated prison for several years. During the periodof Biondi's intense and intimate visits with her husband and her extensivefieldwork in prisons and on the streets of Sao Paulo, the PCC effectively controlledmore than 90 percent of Sao Paulo's 147 prison facilities. Available for the first time in English, Biondi's riveting portrait of thePCC illuminates how the organisation operates inside and outside of prison,creatively elaborating on a decentered, non-hierarchical, and far-reachingcommand system. This system challenges both the police forces againstwhich the PCC has declared war and the methods and analytic concepts traditionallyemployed by social scientists concerned with crime, incarceration,and policing. Biondi posits that the PCC embodies a "politics of transcendence,"a group identity that is braided together with, but also autonomousfrom, its decentralized parts. Biondi also situates the PCC in relation toredemocratization and rampant socioeconomic inequality in Brazil, as wellas to counter-state movements, crime, and punishment in the Americas.