Criminology

The twenty-second entry is a taxa de reclusão, and the English word that looks ready for it is the one to leave alone. « Reclusion » does exist in English, and so do « recluse » and « reclusive », but every one of them describes somebody who has withdrawn from other people of their own accord: the recluse who stops answering the door, the reclusive writer who gives no interviews, a life of reclusion chosen and kept. No court is involved and no door is locked from outside. A reclusão is the opposite arrangement, confinement imposed on somebody by the state, so « the reclusion rate » would end up counting hermits. What this entry measures is how many people are held in prison per hundred thousand of the population, and English calls that « the imprisonment rate », or, in comparative work, « the incarceration rate ». Both of those name the act of shutting a person in, and neither has ever described a wish to be left alone. The trap is a quiet one precisely because the cognate is real and close to hand: it simply belongs to a different life.