Depois das grades: trajetórias de mulheres egressas do sistema prisional

Abstract

Research has shown that a meaningful part of female and male prisoners, opposedly to common sense belief, have engaged in some lawful labor activity before serving custodial sentences, and that, in general, these subjects are in precarious sectors of the labor market. Thus, what are the consequences of staying in prison for their lives after the bars?In order to understand this theme, we present a discussion on the issue of labor in the last decades, which, since the hegemony of neoliberalism, has undergone a process of intensification of flexibilization and precarization. Another globally noted process is the rise of the Penal State, which has led to an increase in the prison population and the criminalization of various forms of conduct. That being said, we present an overview of the consequences of these transformations for the lives of women, who become more and more precarious and criminalized, as it happens to the protagonists of this study. With the intent to practically understand the consequences of imprisonment on the trajectory of women who have already been imprisoned, life story interviews were conducted with 10 women who formerly were part of the prison system in the city of Juiz de Fora, MG. In all the analyzed life stories, daily life is permeated by the need to create strategies to conceal the stigmatizing characteristics; that is, to cover up involvement with crime and the passage through prison. The position of “discreditable” for society makes these women return to the labor market in circumstances even less competitive than before the imprisonment, making it difficult for them to overcome the precariat condition. The daily struggle for survival outside illicit activities is done, in all cases analyzed, without the support of public rehabilitation policies, as if this process were solely individual responsibility and not part of the government's crime prevention agenda. The fact of being a woman, in a patriarchal society, marked each one of the narrated trajectories, either by the violence suffered, by the relation with the children or by the solitude in the jail.