Excluded lives: female Roma life paths translated in the prison context

Roma are a highly stigmatized, segregated and discriminated ethnic minority in Portuguese society. Although the issue of involvement of the Roma ethnic group in deviant and criminal practices is frequently discussed in media and political discourses, scarce research has focused on the experiences of Roma individuals involved with the criminal justice system. In addition, although several studies show an overrepresentation of this group in criminal proceedings and in prison context – the later being even more evident among female prisoners - there has been very little emphasis on the ethnic, gendered and class background of Roma individuals imprisoned in Portugal, especially regarding women. Drawing on two different projects conducted in Portuguese carceral settings, this paper explores the life paths and imprisonment experiences of a group of female Roma prisoners. Data show that the intersection of ethnicity, gender, class and crime strongly determines and constrains the life conditions of Roma women, both behind and beyond prison walls.The authors would like to thank the Foundation for Science and Technology (Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science) the support of PhD fellowships SFRH/BD/47010/2008 and SFRH/BD/73214/2010. We would also like to thank the Direção Geral da Reinserção e Serviços Prisionais (DGSPRS) [General Board for Rehabilitation and Prison Services] for the permission to conduct both studies and the women interviewed for the generous sharing of their experiences.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Formes alternatives d’exercice de la parentalité: paternité et maternité en contexte carcéral

Explorando o carácter genderizado e socialmente situado do conceito de parentalidade, este artigo analisa, através das narrativas de pais e mães reclusos, as formas alternativas de exercício da paternidade e maternidade no contexto prisional. Os dados sugerem que as diferenças e desigualdades de género se materializam, antes e durante a reclusão, em diferentes cenários de envolvimento para mães e pais com percursos desviantes. Os resultados também evidenciam como se reconfiguram os laços parentais num contexto distanciado das configurações tradicionais e ao qual se somam os impactos criados pelo controlo penal.Exploring the gendered and socially situated nature of the concept of parenting, this article analyzes, through the narratives of prisoners who are parents, the alternative ways of mothering and fathering in the prison context. The data collected suggest that gender differences and inequalities materialize, before and during imprisonment, in different scenarios of involvement for mothers and fathers with offending paths. They also show how parental ties are reconfigured in a context apart from traditional family configurations and marked by the impacts created by penal control.Explorant le caractère sexué, ainsi que la nature socialement située du concept de parentalité, cet article analyse, à travers les narratives de pères et mères détenus, les formes alternatives d’exercice de la maternité et de paternité dans le contexte carcéral. Les données suggèrent que les différences et d’inégalités de genre se matérialisent, avant et après l’emprisonnement, en différents panoramas de rapports dans le cas des mères ou des pères avec des parcours de transgression. Elles montrent aussi comment les liens parentaux sont reconfigurés dans un contexte éloigné des configurations familiales conventionnelles et marqué par les impacts du contrôle pénal.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologi

The social and economic costs of female imprisonment: the prisoners’ point of view

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Mothering from prison and ideologies of intensive parenting: enacting vulnerable resistance

“Intensive parenting” ideologies have been increasingly disseminated in popular culture, expert discourses, and social policy. These have impacted particularly mothers owing to their actual or presumed central role in child rearing. One of the main features of these ideologies is an increasing apportioning of rights and responsibilities to families without taking into account the resources needed to sustain the work of caring according to dominant social expectations. Drawing on 20 interviews in a Portuguese female prison, this article explores how mothering is enacted by underprivileged and criminalized women. Data show a complex web of tensions between the norms implicit in “intensive parenting” ideologies and the actual practices, which imprisoned mothers can accomplish. In their mothering from prison, women enact vulnerable resistance to the penal policies that undermine their primary role in child rearing. That is, prisoners creatively negotiate a space within which they can define themselves as “good mothers.”Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

From fight against crime to its risks. Extra prison consequences of female imprisonment

Entre o leque de políticas penais atualmente disponíveis e legitimadas na contenção da criminalidade, a reclusão constitui a forma predominante para sancionar transgressores. Procurando alargar o debate sobre as penas de prisão, este artigo explora, através de entrevistas com 20 mulheres reclusas, os processos de reconfiguração e reestruturação das responsabilidades femininas na decorrência da reclusão de mulheres e analisa as implicações socioeconómicas da ausência feminina nos agregados domésticos. Os resultados evidenciam que a reclusão de mulheres desencadeia ou agrava posições de vulnerabilidade social e instabilidade económica, afetando sobretudo crianças, mulheres e idosos.Among the range of penal policies currently available and legitimized in crime prevention, imprisonment is the predominant approach to punish transgressors. Aiming to broaden the debate about custodial sentences, this article explores, through the analysis of 20 interviews with Portuguese female prisoners, the processes of responsibilities’ reconfiguration and restructuring upon female imprisonment and analyzes the family and socioeconomic implications of female absence in households. Results show that woma n’s imprisonment triggers or exacerbate positions of social vulnerability and economic instability, mostly affecting children, women and elderly

Intimidades em (des)conexão com a prisão: as relações amorosas de mulheres antes e durante a reclusão

Os estudos prisionais sobre mulheres reclusas tendem a negligenciar as configurações e transformações das suas relações amorosas. Partindo de um conjunto de entrevistas a mulheres reclusas, nesta comunicação almeja-se explorar as trajetórias conjugais destas mulheres, focando, por um lado, as relações amorosas no período prévio à reclusão, por outro, as reconfigurações das mesmas nos primeiros meses do cumprimento da pena. Estas evidenciam matizes específicos e singulares ao nível dos contextos e motivações que as envolvem. Os nossos dados evidenciam como as relações amorosas destas mulheres as conectaram às malhas da justiça e do sistema penal antes da sua própria reclusão e independentemente dos seus próprios comportamentos desviantes. Estes vínculos ao sistema penal resultam do apoio que estas mulheres, antes de serem reclusas, prestavam aos seus companheiros reclusos. Este é um papel que não se esbate perante a própria reclusão. Pelo contrário, ele mantem-se e acentua-se. As mulheres passam então a desempenhar dois papéis sociais amalgamados, com fronteiras híbridas, (estar em reclusão e ter o parceiro em reclusão) e ambos com íntimas conexões ao sistema prisional. Tais conexões parecem ditar as suas trajetórias aquém e além da prisão.Prison studies about women prisoners tend to neglect the settings and changes of their intimate relationships. Drawing from a set of interviews with 20 women prisoners, this paper aims to explore the intimate trajectories of these women, focusing, on the one hand, in their love relationships in the period prior to incarceration and, on the other hand, on their reconfigurations in the first months of the prison sentence. These relationships highlight specific hues regarding the contexts and motivations that surround them. Our data show how these women’ romantic relationships connected them to justice and penal system before their own imprisonment and regardless of their own deviant behavior. These links to the criminal system result of the support that these women, before they were prisoners, gave to them imprisoned partners. This is a role that doesn’t fade away during their imprisonment. Instead, it keeps it up and is amplified. Women play two roles with blurred boundaries (being arrested and also have a partner in prison) and both of them have close connections to the prison system. Such connections seem to dictate their pathways behind and beyond prison.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Children on the outside: the experience of mothering among female inmates

This paper examines how the experience of female prison confinement, especially in relation to mothering, is shaped by women’s different trajectories. Results are drawn from interviews with 20 incarcerated mothers in a female prison in Portugal. We aim to explore issues of identity, representations and practices of inmate mothers in a prison context. Our purpose is to analyze motherhood as a dynamic and changing experience according to the contexts in which it unfolds. Primarily, we will focus on the biographical pathways of women prior to incarceration. Then, we will analyze how different trajectories are expressed in prison settings, and how they shape carceral experiences. We will highlight family changes, women’ strategies, and new forms of experiencing motherhood that emerge from the prison context. Finally, we will explore women’s future prospects regarding the relationship and involvement with their children after leaving prison. Our data suggest that traditional gender roles are reproduced insofar as mothering is given as a primary value of femininity. Nevertheless, motherhood in the prison context is affected by contradictions and tensions. While, on the one hand, there’s a discursive exaltation of maternal identity, on the other hand it is difficult to act upon it, since children on the outside are being taken care by others. Since mothering from prison doesn’t involve only mothers and their children, we also highlight how other elements are central in mediating relationships between mothers and their children, promoting or restricting the bonds between them: namely, relationships with caregivers and (re)configurations of mother-child emotional dynamics.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Imprisonment, social policies and intersecting inequalities: (re)producing positions of social exclusion within and beyond prison

Imprisonment brings together complex effects of a range of intersecting inequalities, which comprise issues of class, ethnicity and gender. Drawing on interviews with twenty male and twenty female prisoners in Portugal, our purpose is to assess, from the prisoners’ point of view, how intersecting inequalities are translated into and shaped by the carceral scenario. Results show that imprisonment co-produces a wide range of complex, and sometimes contradictory, implications within and outside the prison scene. On the one hand, it widens or enables the relationship with the Social State from within prison. On the other hand, imprisonment is inserted in a larger web of societal forces within and beyond prison and establishes itself as an additional mechanism by which inequalities are (re)produced and consolidated. In the face of insufficient public services or social policies aimed to mitigate the social, familial and economic issues emerging during confinement situations, the vulnerabilities co-created by imprisonment are mainly responded to by kinship networks, and in particular by women. However, this caring work is mostly render invisible and under recognized.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Vigilância genética, criminalização e coletivização da suspeição

[Excerto] Ao longo das últimas duas décadas, tem-se expandido o papel das bases de dados criminais e das tecnologias genéticas no domínio do combate à criminalidade e terrorismo. Por um lado, tem sido sistemática a expansão, em número e dimensão, de bases de dados informatizadas de elevada escala que armazenam informação relativa a milhares de indivíduos condenados ou que tenham passado pelo sistema de justiça. Por outro lado, assiste-se a um crescente desenvolvimento de tecnologias genéticas de apoio à investigação criminal que permitem identificar suspeitos criminais pela via da pesquisa de familiares ou pela previsão da aparência física de pessoas. No âmbito do presente capítulo, designaremos este conjunto de dispositivos tecnológicos como parte integrante de um sistema tecnocientífico de vigilância genética de foro criminal.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Esfera pública e apelo emocional: o caso Renato Seabra

As notícias sobre crimes representam actualmente uma quantidade significativa dos temas frequentemente (re)tratados nos média. E é sobretudo na arena mediática que se constroem noções acerca dos actores envolvidos nos crimes. Neste artigo analisa-se, à luz da teoria habermasiana, o modo como certos casos criminais se transformam em “dramas públicos” que satisfazem as necessidades de uma arena pública cada vez mais modelada por princípios capitalistas. Discutem-se os impactos deste fenómeno focando em particular um caso recente de criminalidade violenta cuja vítima foi um jornalista português: o homicídio de Carlos Castro. Evidencia-se a partir deste caso a capacidade dos média inflamarem as preocupações e emoções do público promovendo um acompanhamento noticioso constante. Almeja-se ainda analisar sucintamente o modo como as novas tecnologias se vêm incorporando no complexo cenário mediático colocando novos desafios aos cidadãos, à prática da democracia e às cadeias de comunicação social.Crime news currently account for a significant proportion of the themes often featured in the media. And it is especially in the media that notions are constructed about the actors involved in crimes. This article analyzes, in the light of Habermas‟s theory, the ways by which certain criminal cases become “public dramas” that meet the needs of a public arena increasingly shaped by capitalist principles. I discuss the impacts of this phenomenon by focusing on a recent case of violent crime whose victim was a Portuguese journalist: the murder of Carlos Castro. It is highlighted by this case the media‟s capacity to ignite the emotions of the public and to promote a continuous news monitoring. This article also aims to briefly analyze how new technologies have been incorporated into the complex new media scenario, thus creating new challenges to citizens, to the practice of democracy and to media organizations