Women and criminal act: gender and socio-subjective meanings.
mass incarceration; imprisoned women; gender; prison.
Imprisonment as a form of punishment has been used rampantly in Brazil. The
Brazilian prison contingent has grown abruptly in the last 50 years. Today, the country has
the third largest incarcerated population in the world. The present study focuses on analyzing
the reasons that make Brazil appear on the list of countries with the highest rates of violence
and incarceration. In addition, it was intended to verify the subjective factors that lead women
to commit crimes and to assess the meaning of the criminal act for them. A diversified
methodology was chosen, which includes a research of quantitative data in a prison in the
Federal District, an ethnographic study, document analysis and open interviews, carried out
with women in a situation of imprisonment. The investigation was developed having, as a
theoretical reference for analysis, Gender Studies and other intersectionalities (in the case of
the concepts of social vulnerability and racism). In the same way that there are specific ways
of subjectivation, mediated for women by the amorous and maternal dispositifs, there are also
directions for crime influenced by the different dispositifs of subjectivation of men and
women. To achieve the objectives of this research, the thesis will be divided into three axes.
The first refers to an institutional diagnosis, based on qualitative research, with questionnaires
applied to women recently imprisoned in a female penitentiary. At this stage, factors related
to self-identification, physical and mental health of the inmates, criminal experience, family,
support network, work and social assistance rights were observed. The second axis concerns
the interviews that have been carried out with women incarcerated in the same penitentiary
and framed in four different crimes: crimes against life (homicide or attempted), crimes
against property (robbery or theft), drug trafficking and crimes against sexual dignity (rape or
sexual harassment). After the interview and the transcription of the material, a content
analysis will be carried out, which aims to list the recurring themes in the reports of the
inmates in order to establish categories of analysis. Finally, in the third axis, the objective is
to think about how Gender Studies can influence the creation of interventional methodologies
within the prison context. For this, the experience of implementing the program to assist
transsexual people within the prison in question is used in order to exemplify the potential for
intervention that Gender Studies and other intersectionalities provide in order to promote the
process of change for people who committed crimes. The present research is justified by the
large number of people incarcerated in Brazil, in addition to the incipience of studies on the
subject in the scientific literature.