Maternagem na prisão: repercussões na vivência de mães em situação de cárcere

Abstract

Women in prison are penalized multiple times by conditions that cut across gender issues and that disrespect the particularities of being a woman in a prison environment. This also excludes concerns about motherhood even in the face of imprisonment, given that maintaining the mother-child bond is a key alternative for minimizing the impact of imprisonment on women, their children and their families. With this in mind, the aim of this study was to analyze the repercussions on the lives of women who have been separated from their children due to incarceration in Petrolina’s Women's Public Prison. This is an exploratory qualitative study, conducted in May and June 2023 with ten women in prison at Petrolina’s Women's Public Prison who had children under the age of 15 living with them inside or outside the prison. Semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis were used as data collection techniques. The narratives were transcribed ipsis litteris into a Word document and organized in an Excel spreadsheet according to meaning cores for analysis using dialectical hermeneutics. Based on the analysis and data cross-checking, three categories emerged: 1) DAYS IN PRISON: routine, livelihood and self-care of mothers in prison; 2) IDENTITY MARKS OF BEING A MOTHER IN PRISON: experiences and meanings of double punishment; 3) CHILDREN OF MOTHERS IN PRISON: transitions and meanings of life behind bars. The convergences, divergences, complementarities and differences highlighted the suffering of women in prison, both because of the condition in which they find themselves and because of the repercussions that imprisonment has on their children and family members due to the absence of a mother figure. Contact with the prison system and its inequities resonate with the limitations on the continuity of the mother-child bond and worry the mother about the consequences of incarceration and the distance from her child, even corroborating the difficulties of living together after imprisonment. In this way, the experience of motherhood and prison are tensioned due to the very barriers imposed by the prison order, which make it difficult for women in prison to interact with their socio-affective network, as well as the difficulty of maintaining the mother-child dyad in a space that is unprepared for this need.