Violence against mothers in prision:

from invisibility to persistence in incarceration

Abstract

Brazil has been increasing in recent years its normative stock related to the rights of imprisoned mothers. This is a sensitive issue that involves the resolution of the conflict in the very bodies of these women who, although in conflict with the law, carry within or under their care unborn children or/and children to whom the most comprehensive and constitutional guarantees are addressed, as a matter of priority. This paper analyzes the evident contradictions between the legal guarantees and the factual reality of mothers and children, whose very prison situation denounces the fragility of our rule of law. It traces a historical overview of women's imprisonment, showing how the difficulty of dealing with otherness causes the particularities of female existence to be ignored in a system made by men thinking mainly of other men. The analysis faces the lack of statistical data, a situation that, by itself, already demonstrates the precariousness experienced by mothers in prison. To accomplish the task, the paper uses two essential and interrelated categories: institutional violence and torture.