by luciana zaffalon leme cardoso

IMPRISONED WOMEN IN BRAZIL

By Luciana Zaffalon Leme Cardoso


IMPRISONED WOMEN IN BRAZILTHE DIFFERENCE IN TREATMENT AND THEIR

INVISIBILITY


IMPRISONED WOMEN IN

BRAZIL

1. Context: Brazil

2. Problem identification

3. Comparative Graphs of the Brazilian penitentiary system

4. Recent facts - Inauguration of the Sant’Ana Female Penitentiary


Capital – BrasíliaGovernment System – PresidentialismLanguage – Portuguese Surface area – 8,511,996.3 Km²Gross Domestic Product - GDP – US$ 796

billionGDP Per Capita – US$ 4,321 Unemployment rate – 9.8% Illiteracy rate – 11.6%

Population – 186.800.367 inhabitants Men – 49.22 % Women – 50.78 % Incarcerated population: 328.776

Brazil – 8th position in social inequality

46.9% of Brazilian domestic income is held

by the richest 10% of the population, the lower 10% of the population receive

0.7% of the income

1 . CONTEXT: BRAZIL


1. The right to receive intimate visits is not extended to female inmates, as it is granted to men

2. Female homosexuality is deemed as an administrative fault, though there is no legal action foreseen against it (which may even result in the loss of penalty reduction)

3. Basic female specificities are not taken into account: the women have no access to essential products, such as, for example, tampons, for which they try to compensate for by saving the soft part of the bread to use at the time of their menstruation

2. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION


Pertentage of woman out ot the total imprisoned population

4%

96%

Women Men

Penalty Execution - MEN

78%

22%

Penalty execution - WOMEN

48%

52%

3. COMPARATIVE GRAPHS

In INAPPROPRIATE

facilities

In the Public Security System, which is inadequate to carry out the penalty, the women have no access to education or work, since these rights are not warranted during the time served in the police system. As a consequence, they are brutally impaired, once they become ineligible to receive penalty remission. Furthermore, at the police stations and public jails, there is no Public Defender to offer legal assistance, as the Federal Constitution demands.

In APPROPRIATE

facilities


Raising children after WOMEN’S imprisonment

19%

81%

Assumed by the women’s partners

Not assumed by the women’s partners

Before being arrestedWOMEN

67%

33%

Lived with their childrenDid not live with their children

Raising children after MEN’S imprisonment

87%

13%

Assumed by the men’s partners

Not assumed by the men’s partners



Women are more abandoned when in prisonWomen are more abandoned when in prison. Only 18% receive visits from their partners, as opposed to men, among which 69% receive visits from

their wives.

Visits by partners - MEN

65%

35%

Visits by partners - WOMEN

18%

82%

Do not receive

Receive visits from their partners

Receiving visitsWOMEN

36%

11%

53%Do not ever receive

Receive less than once a month

Receive visits

A significant number of women does not receive visitors: 36%, plus 11% of the women who receive visits less than once a month



4. Recent facts - Inauguration of the Sant’Ana Female Penitentiary

State Penitentiary (São Paulo) was deactivated, “remodeled”, and in December 2005, became the “Sant’Ana Female Penitentiary, but without attending neither to female specificities nor to the social

function of resocialization and reeducation

The State of São Paulo holds most of the female inmate population of the country, about 80% of the total of imprisoned women

There is a clear unevenness in treatment between men and women in the Brazilian jail system, and it becomes clearer by

looking into the public policies directed at each of these segments, be it structurewise, or regarding the allocation of resources to build better

environments that attend to the specificities of women

Women always inhabit remodeled buildings that usually maintain their previous physical structure, in total disobedience to the Human Rights and female specificities. These are buildings with structures already deemed inadequate – public facilities previously deactivated or interdicted, often because of security or health issues


4. Sant’Ana Female Penitentiary

4 4 sports courts and 2 vegetable gardens

3 Cinema

Areas 3 and 4

DO NOT EXIST ANYMORE

1 Pavilions

5 Penitentiary Administration

2 Housing companies


legitimating, therefore, in their benefit, the invoking of the due respect to each and every one of their fundamental rights

As a premise we should bear in mind that, whether in the Brazilian judicial system or in any of the democratic nations aware of Human Rights, those convicts of liberty-depriving penalties, even under impossibility of appeal, never lose their human condition




IMPRISONED WOMEN IN BRAZILTHE DIFFERENCE IN TREATMENT AND THEIR

INVISIBILITY

by luciana zaffalon leme cardoso

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