Interpretações de mulheres sobre a prisão: narrativas biográficas de presas e de egressas

Abstract

The number of women in prison has increased in all continents. In Brazil, the increase between 2000 and 2016 was 656%, when the prison system reached around 42 thousand female prisoners. This research aims at identifying different interpretation types of women with imprisonment experience about prison. Twenty-four prisoners and exprisoners were interviewed – 22 in Brazil and 2 in United Kingdom – and the levels of the trajectory, self-presentation and interpretation were analyzed from these biographical narratives. From the total, seven interviews had been previously conducted, analyzed and published in the author master’s dissertation final version. They were incorporated as cases for comparison and as elements for building typologies. Research was grounded in the interpretative sociology approach. The focus on the subject's interaction with the given social structures proved to be more appropriate for understanding prison experiences and meaning from the interviewees’ knowledge and relevance system perspective, their process of socialization and exchanges with the social, historical and geographical field. The methodological approach as developed by Gabriele Rosenthal, based on the reconstructive analysis of biographical narratives proposed by Fritz Schütze, was chose to access the social phenomenon of interest and to pursue the typological identification process in relation to the research problem. Three types of interpretations about imprisonment were identified based on the collected interviews. The first concerns the understanding that prison is a barrier to freedom. This type started giving much more importance to life outside prison after the imprisonment experience. The second type is formed by women who understand the imprisonment experience as a determining factor for learning and personal change. It is a kind of redemption after committing crimes. The third and last type is composed by interviewees that interpret imprisonment as an unjust or tougher penalty than necessary. The interviewees consider their reasons for the committed irregularities so strong that they don’t believe they should be punished with a sentence as severe as imprisonment. Because of this understanding, people who are related with this type, despite taking the blame, do not accept being put inside prison.