How gender and race structure the prison system

dialogues with Angela Davis about racism and sexism in Brazilian punitive control

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2023/66960i

We present an analysis of the phenomenon of female incarceration in Brazil, placing it as a concrete determination of the capitalist mode of production. We start from the issue of how the categories of gender and race act as structural elements of Brazilian penal control, based on the reading proposed by Angela Davis, in dialogue with authors of Brazilian feminist. For this reason, initially, we will promote initial debates about oppressions as structures of social relations in capitalism. Subsequently, it will be necessary to discuss the oppression of gender and race in the Brazilian context, especially considering the overload of reproductive, invisible and precarious work. Finally, we will analyze the consolidation of Brazilian punitive control as an instrument for the management of disposable bodies and the constant production and reproduction of racism and sexism in Brazilian culture. We will use materialistic analysis as a methodology, with the critical interpellation (ana-dialectical moment of the method) through the critical analytical theoretical framework of the black feminism theory. With the formulations, we can conclude, in short, that the violent and racist management of the penal system maintains a solid Brazilian social structure, subjecting the bodies of black women to the harder process of vulnerability imposed by punitive state control.

Keywords: Criminology; Black feminism; Racism; Sexism; Criminal social control.