Abstract
Introduction: the prison system in the Brazilian state of Acre, located in the Western region of the Amazon, is a branch of the criminal justice system that has been suffering from issues such as overcrowding and growth in internal organized crime. The prevalence of these matters directly affects the resocialization of prisoners and inhibits the successful re-engineering of their social values and beliefs.
Objective: to analyze the epidemiological profile of jailed women in the State of Acre, Brazil.
Methods: in a cross-sectional descriptive study, 129 participants were recruited from female penitentiaries in the state of Acre. Conducted between August and December of 2017, data was collected through a validated questionnaire, divided into modules, using both open and closed-ended items.
Results: we found that most women who participated in the study were single (n = 86, 66.7%), had brown skin (n = 93, 72.1%), had children (n=102, 79.1%), resided in the state of Acre (n=117, 90.5%). The mean age of the sample was 27.69 years. Among those participants who reported having partners (n = 40, 31%), we found that half had partners who were also incarcerated (n = 20, 50%). The study results also indicate that drug trafficking (n = 86, 66.7%) was the major cause for female incarceration, followed by homicide crime (n = 16, 12.4%). Over half of the participants were in prison for the first time (n = 75, 58.1%), with a high recidivism rate observed in the total sample (n = 54, 41.9%). A majority of the participants (n = 97, 75.2%) kept in touch with members of their families and a smaller portion (n = 15, 11.6%) received conjugal visits. With regard to social activities, slightly more than half (n = 75, 58.1%) worked and the majority (n = 114, 88.4%) did not study while jailed.
Conclusion: the difficulties associated with accessing inmate data and the lack of peer-reviewed studies on inmate health in Brazil suggests that the public policies recommended by the PNSSP and the National Policy for Comprehensive Health Care for Women should be reevaluated.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 92-100 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Journal of Human Growth and Development |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 31 Jan 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001. The financial viability of the article is due to the Acre - Health Project in the Western Amazon (multi-institutional agreement process no. 007/2015 SESACRE-UFAC-FMABC).
Some female prisoners received financial assistance, most of which comes from the Bolsa Família Program. Our data is also supported by Oliveira et al study, which observed the same financial situation among inmates and concluded that minimal schooling, as well as a lack of employment, were contributing factors for the involvement of those inmates in criminal activities10.
Publisher Copyright:
© The authors (2022). this article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4. 0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons. org/publicdomain/zero/1. 0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Keywords
- Acre
- Health profile
- Inmates
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Life-span and Life-course Studies
