Critical Criminology, Feminism and Intersectionality to Approach the Rise of Female Incarceration

Abstract

Since 2000 the population of incarcerated women in Brazil has risen in a fast and disturbing pace resulting in crowded prisons in each state of the country. This paper discusses the female criminalization adopting an intersectional approach, underlining the intersection of gender, race-ethnicity, poverty and other sources of social subordination as central to understand and face the problem. Rates of female incarceration and the sociodemographic profile of female population in prisons in Brazil and Latin America as published in oficial documents were analysed. The data were interpreted on the basis of the tenets of critical feminist criminology and intersectional thought and with the support of a national and international critical literature on mass criminalization and incarceration, specially of young, black and poor women. Feminization of poverty, racial and gender discrimination, war against drugs policies, rise of a Penal State, among other factors interconnect and result in selective incarceration of 18 to 33 year old young women, of black and brown color, of low incomplete primary education, prosecuted for drug trafficking (caught carrying small amounts of drugs), single mothers. We argue that intersectionality allows us to overcome the descriptive and isolated analysis of the factors involved in crimes comitted by women and their imprisonment clarifying how penal system can incorporate and reproduce naturalized forms of control of female bodies and social injustice. We conclude that the intersectional gaze enlightens the complex biographical situations and daily experiences of oppression that impair nearly 45 thousand women in Brazilian prisons today.

Female Incarcarceration; Intersectionality; Feminist Criminology