Being a Father, Being Imprisoned: Experiences and Meanings of fatherhood in Prisons in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This research is a cartography of the meanings and experiences related to fatherhood of men deprived of liberty or who have been imprisoned in Rio de Janeiro. As a cartographic intervention research based on the Deleuzian concept of folding, data will be analyzed from interviews with a prisoner and an ex-prisoner, or prison survivor, both of whom have children. The article analyzes some of the folds of fatherhood, that is, the way it is experienced by imprisoned men, where care relationships are managed, the meanings about fatherhood and the effects of criminalization processes on this relationship. In addition to the institutional erasure of the parental status of prison survivors and the stigmatization imposed on this population, this research seeks to map their unique ways of experiencing parenthood and family relationships, which point to the questioning of stigmas and to the power of family relationships even in contexts of precariousness and violations of rights imposed by the prison system.