Condemning Eve: an analysis of the ideal of maternity in prison institutions

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis about the maternity of women in detention in prison institutions in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, in Minas Gerais. Based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with professionals from two exclusively female units - the Estêvão Pinto Penitentiary Complex and the Center for Reference to Pregnant Women Deprived of Liberty - in the years 2017 and 2018, it seeks to understand the experience of women mothers in prison. As a result, both institutional discourses and prison routines take the form of condemnation and punishment directed at those women who deviated from the ideal of motherhood present in our culture: that is, the mother entirely devoted to the life of her sons and daughters. In this sense, this paper deals with an ideal of maternity present in our society, and its contradiction: criminal mothers. Whether they are prevented from exercising their motherhood by the prison walls, or punished together with their sons and daughters in prison, imprisoned women mothers are judged beyond the infractions committed within the scope of the Justice System. It is, therefore, these convictions that this article deals with, mediated by the voices of other women: the employees of the prison institutions.