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Inmate Wives: expressions of violence inside a prison in southern Brazil

Virgínia de Menezes Portes
Federal University of Santa Catarina, Department of Public Health, Graduate Program in Collective Health. Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil.
Email: virginiaportes@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6604-1962

Sheila Rúbia Lindner
Federal University of Santa Catarina, Department of Public Health, Graduate Program in Collective Health. Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil.
Email: sheila.lindner@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9724-1561

Rodrigo Otávio Moretti-Pires
Federal University of Santa Catarina, Department of Public Health, Graduate Program in Collective Health. Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil.
Email: rodrigo.moretti@ufsc.br
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6372-0000

Resumo
Este estudo tem como objetivo analisar como a violência estrutural e institucional se manifestou na vida de mulheres companheiras de homens privados de liberdade numa prisão na região sul do Brasil. Trata-se de um estudo etnográfico desenvolvido ao longo de cinco meses do ano de 2022 com seis mulheres que visitavam seus companheiros no presídio. Gênero e classe social, caracterizados pela violência estrutural, apresentaram-se como marcadores sociais responsáveis por limitar suas escolhas e as vulnerabilizar. A violência institucional evidenciou-se nas experiências dessas mulheres por meio da institucionalização secundária, revelando episódios de violência moral e psicológica. Conclui-se que o cárcere representa um depósito da exclusão social, marcado pelas violências estruturais e responsável por perpetuar as estruturas institucionais injustas capazes de condicionar as mulheres às experiências sociais marcadas por precarização, privações de oportunidades e proteção das leis.
Palavra-chave: Violência; Prisões; Estudos de Gênero; Violência de Gênero.

Abstract
This study analyzes how structural and institutional violence is manifested in the lives of women who are partners of men deprived of liberty in a prison in southern Brazil. Ethnographic research was conducted over a five-month period in 2022 with six women who visited their partners in prison. Gender and socioeconomic status, characterized by structural violence, emerged as social markers responsible for limiting the women’s choices and rendering them vulnerable. Institutional violence was evident in episodes of moral and psychological violence experienced by the women, revealing the effects of indirect institutionalization. It is concluded that incarceration represents a repository of social exclusion. It is marked by structural violence and is responsible for perpetuating unjust institutional structures, which condition women to social experiences marked by precarity, privation of opportunities, and lack of legal protections.
Keywords: Violence; Prisons; Gender Studies; Gender-Based Violence.

Introduction
Between 2000 and 2019, the global prison population increased by 25%, bringing the total number of people incarcerated in 2019 to 11.7 million—a number comparable to the populations of countries like Bolivia and Belgium1. Brazil has the third largest prison population in the world, behind the United States and China2. In 2022, there were 832,295 people incarcerated in Brazilian prisons, which represented a 257% increase vis-a-vis 2000. Most of these inmates are poor and black (68%) and aged between 18 and 293.
The vast majority (96%) of Brazil’s prison population is male4, while the visitors to prisons tend to be female—usually the inmates’ mothers, sisters, daughters, and partners5,6. In some Brazilian states, there are five times more visits to male prisons than there are to female prisons7.
The conditions in Brazilian prisons are poor, and there is little public debate in the country on the social impacts of incarceration, especially on the families of inmates. This matters, because each person in prison has a social, financial, and psychological impact on five other people, on average8.
Structural violence is a kind of violence that causes individual vulnerability. It happens when there are gender, race, and ethnicity inequities, as well as poor economic and political conditions, which can engender suffering, illness, and harm. In other words, all social injustice is structural violence. Unequal power relations induce certain ways of life, behaviors, and institutional and governmental policies9,10. As structural violence is materialized through political and economic measures that benefit some groups to the detriment of others, crystalizing and legitimizing social inequalities, it is crucial to understand it as instrumental in exposing vulnerable groups to crime, especially when considering the prison setting. Structural violence is expressed in institutional violence, so it is also present in prisons, insofar as incarceration itself causes vulnerability, making the life of the person deprived of freedom inconsequential9.
Institutional violence is enacted in prisons through punitive norms, rules, and procedures designed to control behaviors and maintain a certain order. It is a form of structural violence in which the violence is legitimized in an institutional setting11. Institutional behaviors take precedence over individual needs, which are largely are overlooked12.
Studying the structural violence and institutional violence embedded in the prison system as experienced by female visitors, both of which are analyzed simultaneously in this research, is unprecedented in the theoretical and methodological contributions made by the social and human sciences in public health. This is because violence and its relationship with health in prisons are rendered invisible to the public gaze and are difficult to access from a scientific perspective. This study analyzes how structural and institutional violence is manifested in the lives of the female partners of men deprived of liberty in a prison in southern Brazil.

Methods
This ethnographic study investigated the experiences of the wives and partners of male inmates during prison visits. The research developed a “consistent description” that resulted from an immersion in the daily lives of the women investigated. It focused on bringing forth underlying information and details in a bid to explain ways of life and reveal patterns of meaning that could be translated by the culture13.
Ethnography was an important approach for the research, as it enabled the researcher to penetrate the prison walls and document phenomena otherwise rendered invisible. Furthermore, taking this approach meant being available and willing to interact with visitors waiting in line; it allowed the research to probe the relationship between prison and society and how incarceration is articulated both inside and outside the prison walls14.
The ethnographic fieldwork was conducted over five months, between July and December 2022, in a prison in the south of Brazil that has been in operation for over 30 years. At the time, there were 341 inmates in the prison: almost 40% more than its capacity. Participant observation was carried out by immersion in the spaces where the visitors circulate. These spaces can be seen as an “in-between place”: a zone that marks a border beyond which only certain people (in this case, visitors) may go. The immersion was conducted by one member of the research team three to four times a week, when she interacted with workers, male prisoners who worked inside the prison, and family members on visiting days. However, in line with the study objective, it was the visits made by the female partners of male inmates that were the primary focus.
The researcher documented daily life among these individuals in a field diary, which she kept with her throughout the data collection phase. In it, she recorded her perceptions, which included security-related tensions and factors associated with her being a woman in a majority male environment. All these notes enabled a more detailed analysis of the situations experienced.
It was only after five months of ethnographic research that the interviews were begun, with a view to probing further the perceptions that had emerged in the field. The eligibility criteria for participation in the interviews were: 1) being the partner of a male inmate; 2) having seen the researcher at least once when visiting the inmate; and 3) being available and willing to be interviewed. Invitations were issued by the prison’s social service sector when social and conjugal visits were being scheduled.
The interviews were conducted inside the prison after the women had left their partner, as the researcher had already accompanied them on their routine visits. The researcher was also present at the security procedures, which included X-rays, body scans, bag inspections, and frisks.
The interviews followed a semi-structured script and lasted an average of 40 minutes. The topics covered were: (1) relationship with the inmate; (2) experience of the prison routine; (3) situations of violence experienced in the prison; and (4) challenges the family faced due to the imprisonment of the man.
To build trust with her interviewees, the researcher explained that she did not have access to any medical records and did not know what crimes the men had committed. She added that she was not part of a legal or police training program and gave her assurance that all information divulged during the interviews would be kept confidential. She developed this approach when she realized the need to put her interviewees more at ease15.
Data were processed using thematic content analysis, which serves to identify, code, analyze, and interpret themes that emerge in a corpus16.
The research was approved by the research ethics committee of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (approval number 5,440,345). The researcher read out and explained the contents of the informed consent form to the participants before asking for their signature. All the participants have been given fictitious names, and any data that could be used to identify them has been omitted.

Results and Discussion
Six female partners of men deprived of liberty participated in this study. Their sociodemographic characteristics are presented in Table 1.
Only two women received any type of financial benefit from the state: one received prison aid and the other received Bolsa Família, a benefit for low-income households. None of them knew or were part of any organized civil society group defending the rights of prisoners or their families. The women’s household income was low; they were unemployed or in precarious employment; they had few years of education; and they were forced to formalize their relationship with their partners in the form of marriage or common-law marriage (civil partnership). Only two of them owned their own home; three lived in rental properties or properties owned by relatives, and one lived with her parents.

Structural violence: “if you’re in jail, it can’t be for something good”

Structural violence is a concept that helps shed light on certain social markers, such as class, race, gender, sexuality, and age, that result in individual experiences of suffering. It relates to structural elements with historical and social roots that determine which individuals will suffer and which will be protected from risks, harm, damage, and inequity. Furthermore, it dictates who is and who is not free to make choices and take actions, under the influence of sexism, poverty, racism, and political violence. The mechanisms of violence tend to be hidden from sight, and can be exercised in institutions and other hierarchical, rule-based settings10.
Structural violence is cruel, as it spawns poverty, hunger, and diverse forms of submission and exploitation. It is the form of violence that causes the systemic, abject poverty seen around the world17.
In this study, “gender” was found to be an important social determinant of structural violence. For Butler18, gender is performed; it is a script composed of acts that perpetuate the belief in original differences between women and men, passing through different socio-historical constructs. This is compounded by endeavors to frame such differences as immutable under the banner of the natural sciences, based on physiological arguments19.
Structural violence had affected the interviewees’ trajectories in different ways. One such way was the importance attributed to visiting menfolk in prison, seen as a female responsibility. This act of visiting men deprived of freedom has been observed by other researchers, and stands in contrast to the reality at women’s prisons, where visits by male partners are rare5,6. Visiting a person in prison is an act that is related to gender identity: as women and wives, women feel obliged to visit and not abandon their partners. In the words of Marcele, “the biggest challenge is not to abandon him, because you can’t just turn your back. He’s my husband. Ever since I made that choice, I have to support and visit [him].”
The obligation not to abandon the partner is expressed as a social norm. The female is overvalued as a person who will stay by her partner no matter what, taking on the role of caregiver inside and outside the prison, which means making frequent visits to the prison. Drawing on ethnographic work, Lermen20 presents the social meanings of prison visits and women’s devotion to them in male prisons. Being a “bag dragger,” as she terms these women, means performing the kind of love and care that is typically associated with the female gender identity.
Women bear the burden of caring for their partner and family. In the absence of their partner, they become the main breadwinner and have to adapt to the prison routine (visits, legal counsel, and access to healthcare). This is all part of the burden, as Sabrina explains: “you pay for the lawyer, you send in bags [of goods], you spend a lot. I stopped working because of him, because he doesn’t get any visits except mine. So I have to be devoted.”
In addition to covering the costs inherent to prison—a monthly bag’s worth of personal hygiene products and non-perishable foodstuffs—families are impacted in their ability to make ends meet, since it becomes impossible to hold down a regular job and fit in the visiting schedules and other activities required to defend the man’s rights. The women’s difficulty in being the main breadwinner at times of shortage also goes hand in hand with loneliness, as highlighted by Marcele: “It’s hard to cope with everything on your own. Everything is down to me (..) I pay for the lawyer, the prison bank. They’re expenses I hadn’t budgeted for.”
The hardships faced by the women when coping with the imprisonment of a partner are the outcome of a form of structural violence that stems from gender inequalities and self-subjugation to the male partner21. Providing support, being overwhelmed, and displaying dedication are all part of the performance expected of these women, making the relationship something to which they must devote themselves almost exclusively, strengthening their subjugation to the male partner. In this process, (common-law) marriage is paramount. It makes many women endure situations of inequality and violence in their conjugal relations in the name of maintaining the relationship21.
Although none of the women reported having been the victim of physical violence from their sexual partner, the structural violence they experienced as women meant they were under obligation not to abandon them. The constraints imposed by their gender and socioeconomic status were disadvantages that disrupted their life trajectories22. Both before and after the imprisonment of the partner, these trajectories were marked by limitations, hardships, and imposed responsibilities, all of which made them increasingly precarious22. Nonetheless, the women expressed agency and performed functions based on power relations5, with many of them taking on new roles because of their partner’s dependence21. They did not, however, identify these actions, which were the outcome of a complex web of gender inequality, as determinants of situations of violence.
In their words, the women revealed that they felt they were seen by society for their identity as “prisoner’s wives.” This appeared as both a symptom and an effect of structural violence9, as expressed by Laura: “People are really judgmental (…), they think that every prisoner is the same. My family asked how I could be with him if he was a user and was then sent to prison.”
This passage reveals that the stigma associated with being involved with someone who has committed a crime is even expressed by family members. It also shows the perception that society sees all people deprived of freedom in the same light, irrespective of their life story and background, tarring all inmates and their families with the same brush. In this sense, “being an inmate’s partner”—“marrying a criminal”—is itself another social marker of the structural violence produced by prison, as it configures and confirms the criminal as dangerous and depraved. This label is associated with a paucity of choices and actions that stems from the political violence inherent to the figure of the criminal and his female partner.
Extending the label of “criminal” to the families of prisoners causes suffering. It is a stain on the women’s trajectories, something they are branded with like a “social tattoo.” As a result, some of the women interviewed chose not to tell the whole truth. Carla was one: “Everyone thinks that if you’re in jail, it can’t be for something good. So I preferred to lie [and say] that I was separated or a widow than say he was in jail, because that put an end to the subject.”
For more than 20 years, Carla had told people she did not have a partner so as to protect herself against stigmatizing comments about having a husband in prison. She also revealed that her husband was a repeat offender, which meant he had not taken part in raising her daughters; this was all her daughters had known.
The women all shared experiences of stigma and exclusion after their menfolk were imprisoned. They were treated with mistrust and as social pariahs. In other words, having a partner who is incarcerated activates invisible mechanisms of punishment and results in stigmatization and exclusion23,24.
Carla associated physical and mental illness with the stress caused by her partner’s latest prison sentence: “These problems began with the latest stint in prison. I lost a percentage of my lungs and had five [cardiac] arrests. Later, God gave me my life back, and I think, ‘oh Lord, is this what you gave me my life back for?’” Carla also had a son in the same situation. In her extreme suffering, she almost died, and even after recovering she still questioned the point of carrying on.
When Josiane was asked about her health, she said, “I think my psychological health is pretty shaken. I’m not going to say it’s easy, because it’s not. It really affects your emotions a lot; it really affects your psychological [wellbeing].” Josiane revealed that her mental health had been impaired after her partner’s incarceration. Furthermore, the financial costs and time devoted to the situation meant she was unable to seek treatment.
Exposure to the vulnerabilities and suffering inherent to the prison setting was expressed as a risk factor for the partners of the male inmates, constituting another impact of structural violence. The stress of coping with the prison environment impacted the women’s physical and mental health, although they did not associate the daily violence they experienced with poor health. Their conception of health was clearly biological, taking no account of the historical and social dimensions of illness25. In their interviews, they did not clearly identify or mention any of the broader determinants of health, such as the violence associated with the experience of prison.
A recent study estimated that 3.3 million Brazilians suffer some type of disorder due to the incarceration of a family member8. Different vulnerabilities are a result of the combined suffering associated with the organizational practices of the prison institution and the moral harm caused by the social exclusion of having a family member behind bars. Recognizing the vulnerability to suffering associated with prison, the National Policy for Comprehensive Health Care for People Deprived of Liberty in the Prison System has health promotion and harm prevention actions that include care for the families of inmates26.
Our investigation of the trajectories of female partners of male inmates found that preexisting social inequalities were maintained and had the capacity to breed multiple forms of submission and exploitation. These include gender-related asymmetries, precarious working conditions, low household income, unemployment, low levels of education, and stigmatization.
Being the female partner of a man deprived of liberty means bearing the social brand of a specific form of prison-based structural violence that is capable of causing deprivation and suffering. This structural violence, which is heightened in the prison context, exacerbates trajectories marked by existential, material, and symbolic restrictions and has an impact on physical and mental health. It serves to maintain a political and socioeconomic system that legitimizes the exclusion and marginalization of a group that is already vulnerable to social suffering.

Institutional violence: “It was just soap. Did she have to humiliate me like that?”

Institutional violence was identified in the women’s exposure to different situations in the prison setting involving institutional norms, discourse, and penalties. Selected excerpts reveal their submission to the prison rules and codes, which itself indicates the reproduction of social structures and formal and informal rules that are unjust and violate human rights.
One of the situations worth highlighting is the act of visiting one’s partner. Certain prerequisites must be met to earn the right to conjugal visits. These include being married or in a common-law marriage or civil partnership with the inmate; i.e., conjugal visits are ruled out for men in other types of relationship. In view of this, many women are forced to legalize their relationship with their partners, which strengthens their bond to the inmate while also restricting their autonomy and freedom of choice. Marcele explained it in these terms: “I had to do all the documentation for the common-law marriage because we weren’t married. The whole process is complicated. You have to go to the notary’s office, get his signature, pay, and wait (..)”.
Most of the relationships had not been legalized before the men were imprisoned. The women had to formalize the legal bond with their partners, otherwise the prison system would not recognize them. This rule exacerbates gender injustices as it strengthens and maintains the status quo of the institution of marriage. Historically, marriage has served to reproduce men’s domination over women. Legitimized and strongly inspired by feminist struggles, the refusal to marry is linked to women’s self-affirmation as independent subjects free from male domination. Above all, it is linked to the constitution of a female identity that turns its back on the conjugal notions of marriage and family-making27,18.
Institutional violence is also expressed in the dress code and rules that female visitors have to follow. To enter the prison, they must all dress the same way: a crop top that is free of metal elements; a white T-shirt; gray sweatpants; and colored flip-flops, so they cannot be exchanged for the ones worn by the inmates. The women’s identity is further erased, since not only must they wear identical clothes, but they are identified primarily as “so-and-so’s visitor” or “so-and-so’s wife.” This constitutes an act of violence that takes the form of the “mortification of the self”28; violence that extends from the institutionalized individuals to all those who visit them. The female partners of the male inmates are exposed to humiliation and violations that mutilate their individual identities and subjectivities, transforming them into objects, all of which contributes to their depersonalization and loss of social roles28.
The banning of clothing and accessories that symbolize femininity is linked to the prohibition against women’s sexuality. By removing these identity markers, the institution exerts control over the women’s bodies, thereby reinforcing the idea that the only female figure allowed to visit inmates is the “homemaker.” Institutional violence takes the form of repressive measures designed to impose obedience and censorship. Sexuality is centered on the legitimized couple, the family, and is marked by puritanism and interdictions29.
When rules and procedures are not followed to the letter, visits are prohibited. Furthermore, women are only allowed to take certain items with them for conjugal visits: liquid soap, a blanket, a sheet, and a towel, all white. These objects are all inspected meticulously by the guards. The women are also checked when they are leaving to make sure they are carrying the same objects as they entered with. If they are not, they may be penalized, such as having their visitor’s card confiscated and therefore being prevented from making the next conjugal and social visits. Josiane explains: “If I make a mistake or he does something against the rules inside, they immediately take away the card and stop visits.’
Without a visitor’s card, no family member can access the prison. This card is issued only after a background check on the individual, which includes police records, socioeconomic status, and kinship to the inmate. If the family member or inmate breaches any of the rules, the card is confiscated and visits are banned.
The women’s words and the field notes demonstrated a prison routine consisting of rules and procedures focused primarily on security and constant surveillance. Confiscating a relative’s visitor card served as punishment for rule-breaking and was one of the biggest fears expressed by the informants. Here, institutional violence is perpetrated by means of a rule that controls behaviors through punishment, which is justified through a discourse of maintaining order. The formal structure, the enabling setting, and the ideological context all foster the institutionalization of violence11.
In the prison investigated, strip searches had been replaced by body scans and X-rays, which represented progress from a human rights perspective. However, until 2020, humiliating practices had been used, characterizing institutional violence, as reported by Laura: “to get in I would take off all my clothes and squat down with a mirror underneath, just like you see in the movies. One day I was so nervous I got my period.”
Laura reported that her state of nerves and the fact that she had to expose her naked body caused profound emotional distress. The justification for the procedure was that it would prevent illicit objects from being smuggled in: institutional violence was legalized in the name of maintaining security and control. Strip searches are considered a violation of human rights and were recently discussed in the Brazilian Supreme Court, which resulted in their being banned as standard procedure for access to prisons. The procedure is considered degrading and is prohibited even in prisons that have no body scanner or X-ray device30. Despite this, the suffering reported by Laura is still experienced by other women visiting prisons. Since each prison decides on its own routines, female visitors are still at the mercy of random acts by guards. State punishment extends outwards to inflict their bodies with suffering31.
The institutional violence perpetrated inside prisons can be extreme. Valéria reported a case of moral and psychological violence she suffered when she was leaving the prison after a conjugal visit because she had broken one of the prison rules. During the check of her belongings, the guard found that she had left behind the liquid soap she had taken in with her. The guard threatened and shouted at her, causing considerable distress. As Valéria put it, “my god, it was just soap. Did she have to humiliate me like that?” The guard shouted so loud her voice could be heard at the reception, causing embarrassment and humiliation. When Valéria was explaining what had happened, she added: “if my card is withheld, I’ll defend my rights. I’ll report it to the public prosecution service and put on record that I was treated like an animal.”
The humiliation Valéria experienced is one example of the institutional violence to which the bodies that visit prisons—mainly female bodies—are exposed. In addition to verbal abuse, she was also threatened with having her visitor’s card confiscated. The simile she used—being treated “like an animal”—presents a case of individual suffering in its social framework, in which even the most private feelings and emotions are social facts32. Furthermore, it reveals how abuse is exerted as a form of institutionalized gender violence that is generated in microsocial settings of unequal power relations10: on one side, a female visitor; on the other, the institution that dictates and regulates the rules of the game.
The fragility exposed in this unequal relationship is indicative of what Butler calls precarious lives33, in which some lives are valued to the detriment of others. Based on concepts such as vulnerability, precariousness, violence, and mourning, Butler reflects on the value attributed to lives and, above all, the political, economic, and social processes that determine which lives may be lived and which deaths are acceptable33.
The social markers of these women’s life trajectories place make them more vulnerable than others. Their social experiences are marked by violence and an absence of protection by laws and access to the legal system. From this, their lives can be seen as doubly precarious, firstly because they are seen as voided of value and, secondly because they defend, love, and care for lives that dwindle behind bars, unable to be mourned.

Study Limitations
One significant limitation of this study concerns the fact that the interviews were conducted inside the prison. Even though they took place in a private room and in the absence of prison staff, these circumstances may have affected the way the interviewees shared their perceptions of their visiting experiences insofar as they may have feared suffering some form of institutional reprisal.

Concluding Remarks
The violence experienced by the women analyzed in this study—all the partners of men deprived of liberty—sheds light on the vulnerabilities of these “prison wives.” Prison was found to be a place that exacerbates violence due to institutional characteristics, such as the enforcement of order and the lack of means to resist. Investigating this setting gave a new understanding of the power relations that configure a hidden, highly surveilled space to which access is tightly controlled. All this compounds the inability of inmates and their families to be seen, heard, and remembered.
Structural violence was found to mark the women’s lives, taking the form of existential, material, and symbolic constraints. Inequities of access resulting from structural elements, such as socioeconomic status and gender, were found to limit these women’s options even before their contact with the prison. These iniquities continued to exert a strong influence on the women throughout their experience of prison, as it forced them to give up work and formal education and prevented them from caring for their own health in order to devote their energies to supporting and caring for their partners and children. Even so, these women were not aware that the various determinants of violence produced by the prison had a direct impact on their own health and that of their relatives.
Prison is a repository of social exclusion that is marked by structural violence and is responsible for perpetuating unjust institutional structures. Being a prisoner’s partner constitutes a social marker of this structural violence, which has the power to create the figure of the criminal and thereby curb rights, representing a health risk factor for the partners of inmates.
The rules and discourse of prison are instrumental in reproducing unjust social structures that repeatedly violate human rights, constituting institutional violence. The patriarchal system imposes rules that consolidate forms of violence and humiliation, particularly against female bodies. These include the requirement to legalize their relationship with the inmate, the measures by which their identities are erased, and the invasive search procedures. Furthermore, the requirement for the women to be “homemakers”— i.e., in a legally sanctioned relationship with the inmate—is another face of this institutional violence.
Finally, focusing on the life trajectories of the female partners of imprisoned men reveals complex interactions between prison, gender, and violence, which are sometimes veiled, sometimes blatant. Above all, it identifies factors that can make the lives of prison wives doubly precarious, even if they do not necessarily identify them as such: their lives are voided of value and they devote themselves to the defense of other lives constrained by bars. Intertwined lives where loss cannot be mourned.

Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, from the Ministry of Education, for financing this research. We are also especially grateful to the Department of Public Health at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, whose Postgraduate Program in Public Health plays a fundamental role in conducting similar research.

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