Intimacy and power: body searches and intimate visits in the prison system of São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

In this article, I discuss some injunctions and constraints that enable and regulate heterosexual intimate encounters inside male prisons in São Paulo, Brazil. From considerations about the body searches of prisoners´ relatives and intimate visits inside these prisons, I intend to contribute to the field of prison studies in three main areas. First, I reveal certain elements that improve the characterization of the prisons of São Paulo and Brazil that has prevailed in the international literature; second, I aim to problematize current forms of the phenomenon of mass incarceration based on the dynamics and prison conditions specific to the context of the global south; finally, I intend to widen the field of empirical and conceptual references in the analysis of the social experience of families of prison members, especially women who visit their partners who are behind bars.

The quadruple burden: Reproductive labor & prison visitation in Venezuela

“…Empirical studies in the United States, the world's largest jailer, demonstrate a correlation between decreased social spending and a rise in mass incarceration in which prisons no longer function as institutions of social reform but as warehouses of an unemployable racialized underclass (Wacquant, 2009). While this model of neoliberal penality does seem to be consistent with some cases in Latin America (Carter, 2017;Mu¨ller, 2012) Godoi (2016) raises critical questions about the wholesale application of this US model onto Latin America.…”

“…My work engages with the growing scholarly ethnographic research on Latin American prisons (Antillano et al, 2016;Biondi, 2016;Carter, 2017;Darke and Garces, 2017;Weegles, 2017) and particularly those studying gender, social reproduction and prison visitation (Ferreccio, 2018;Godoi, 2016;Pereyra Iraola, 2018) Building off of the assertion that "women's essential role in shaping prison life [is] as visitors" (Fontes and O'Neill, 2019: 90) and that the unpaid work of women "contributes to the sustaining of regimes of incarceration" (Pereyra Iraola, 2018: 232) the following article makes important empirical contributions by examining prison visitation through the experiences of women visitors within prisons under carceral self-rule as well as essential theoretical contributions that examine the relationship between carcerality and the gendered politics of reproductive labor under capitalism.…”

“…She describes this as a "secondary prisonization" of visitors, while others focus on how visitation highlights the "liminality" of carceral spaces (Moran, 2013a). But, Godoi (2016) based on ethnographic research on intimate prison visits and strip searches in Sao Paolo prisons, argues that the impacts of incarceration on family members is neither 'secondary' nor 'collateral' but is an example of the 'expansion of prisonization.' In both the US and Latin America, the research highlights the gendered division of labor that creates an emotional and financial burden for female visitors (although Fleetwood (2015) contends that male prisoners also do emotional labor to maintain family bonds).…”

“…Garces (2014) raises concerns about the normalization of strip searches in Ecuador and the growing digital technologies that perform virtual denuding, arguing that "state possession demanded the temporary custody and manipulation of all bodies that traverse prison space" (2014: 456). Through ethnographic research in Argentina (Ferreccio, 2018;Pereyra Iraola, 2017) and Brazil, a consensus has emerged that the strip search (a practice far less common for visitors in the United States) is not a secondary consequence or security measure but a systematic process of control, violence and discipline, even understood as 'an act of war' in which women's bodies become a tool in the daily production of the prison boundary and is thus "central to the understanding of the dynamics of contemporary mass incarceration" (Godoi, 2016).…”

Relaciones de género en los intersticios de las prisiones argentinas. Tensiones en torno a derechos y cuidados

“…Como señala Godoi (2016), la intimidad de los cuerpos en este contexto puede ser pensada como un espacio estratégico de actualización de las técnicas de gobierno. La requisa implica una serie de controles que apuntan a evitar el ingreso de elementos prohibidos.…”