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A Decolonial and Depatriarchal Approach to Women’s Imprisonment: Co-governance, Legal Pluralism and Gender at Santa Mónica Prison, Perú

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Prisons, Inmates and Governance in Latin America

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology ((PSIPP))

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Abstract

Research about prisons in the Global South has started to analyse the power dynamics between prison staff and prisoners, but it has focused mainly on men's prisons. Following decolonial and feminist, the chapter is based on the empirical data produced during an ethnography in Santa Monica, a women's prison in Lima, Peru. I argue that Santa Monica functions through a co-governance with prisoner-delegates who have the role of intermediaries or interface brokers. Moreover, I propose that prison is a site of interlegality where national law and customary law superimpose and interpenetrate in the subjects' actions and minds. Consequently, social relationships between authorities, prison staff and prisoners are defined by a hybrid legal system. I conclude with the importance of recognising different types of political and social organisations, not only as the result of errors or of failed development processes in the Global South, but also as an alternative configuration that may lead us to question how we conceptualise prison and imprisonment. In the same line, I acknowledge women prisoners are not only moulded by patriarchal structures, but also recognise the ambivalences and the possibilites of organising and engaging in semi-autonomous actions while imprisoned.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    To understand the huge increase in Latin American imprisonment in general and that in Perú in particular, scholars have insisted that it is necessary to look at the impacts of the American “War on Drugs” (Ariza and Iturralde, 2019; Diaz-Cotto, 2005; Norton-Hawk, 2010; Reynolds, 2008). As a regional phenomenon, there is a high percentage of women imprisoned for drug-related crimes. Mexico (44%), Colombia (48%) and Brazil (60.6%) also show high percentages of women imprisoned for drug-related crimes (Institute for Criminal Policy Research, 2016; WOLA, 2016). In Perú, 55% of women are imprisoned for drug-related crimes and are over-represented in this offence category in comparison to men (17%) (INPE, 2018).

  2. 2.

    The psychologists work in Santa Mónica from Monday to Friday. Given the number of psychologists in Santa Mónica, each psychologist gives professional attention to approximately 100 prisoners. Their responsabilities include periodic psychological evaluations, group therapy, individual therapy, counselling, organisation of institutional events, creation of psychological reports for the prisoners’ trials, administration tasks and daily “emergencies”, among others. I was not able to establish the “ideal” number of prison staff needed for Santa Mónica, but taking into account the expectancy of “resocialisation” and the prison’s overcrowding, it is evident that the staff have a high rate of work overload.

  3. 3.

    Neither do I want to homogenise the “Western prison”: arguably there are also very many different prisons in the West/North. In this case, the term is used to reference a political binary and the power relationships that have been constituted between the North and the South, Western and Non-Western.

  4. 4.

    Women prisoners get money from their visits, from their informal work inside prison (for example, some prisoners outsource their cleaning duties, and other prisoners are contracted to do them), and work in formal labour workshops. There are two different types of labour workshops: working autonomously and working for a private company. Some prisoners engage in creating goods (shoes, clothes, bijouterie, etc.) and services (hairdressing, food, and kiosks) and selling their products inside prison and outside prison through their external connections. On the other hand, in the last years, private companies are also contracting women prisoners to produce their goods. In Santa Mónica, women work in a jean and a leather company.

  5. 5.

    The participants mentioned different quota amounts which oscillated between 1.5 and 20 soles (USD 0.40 and USD 5.5) weekly. It is plausible that the quotas vary per block.

  6. 6.

    El Calabozo or Meditacion (meditation) refers to solitary confinement in prison. It is interesting how penitentiary actors have different names for it which indicates opposed significances. Prisoners refer to it as El Calabozo, the pit, which symbolically associates it with an emotionally overwhelming, dark, lonely and violent space. In contrast, the authorities and staff refer to it as Meditacion, which presumes a different objective and emotional fluency. Indeed, it is symbolically intended to be a space of calm and introspective reflexivity that leads to personal transformations.

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  1. Research Group in Forensic and Penitentiary Psychology, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Lima, Peru

    Lucia Bracco Bruce

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  1. Faculty of Social and Juridical Sciences, National University of Litoral, Santa Fe, Argentina

    Máximo Sozzo

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Bruce, L.B. (2022). A Decolonial and Depatriarchal Approach to Women’s Imprisonment: Co-governance, Legal Pluralism and Gender at Santa Mónica Prison, Perú. In: Sozzo, M. (eds) Prisons, Inmates and Governance in Latin America. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98602-5_8

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