Amor em cárcere: relações afetivas no sistema penitenciário do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This study aims to analyse the construction and maintenance of affective relationships at the prison system in Rio de Janeiro. It is based mainly on the perception of prisoners mates, former prisoners, staff and retired employees from the state prison administration. Moreover, the study is based on the analysis of state laws that have now been repealed as well as laws that deal with family relationships in prison and are in force. Besides that, it uses quantitative data to analyse the profile of registered prisoners in the Department of Penitentiary Administration (SEAP) to make conjugal visits. According to former prisoners, prisoners partners and certain officials of SEAP, affective relationships, especially conjugal visits, are essential to decrease the typical voltage of the prison context and help to ensure a "normal" return of the prisoner to the world outside prison. For this group, women are considered as true "re-socialization agents" of the internal ones. On the other hand, most of the prison administration officials, especially those related to the security of prisons, realize that affective relationships in prison are important, but they also see them as a threatening to the institutional domain. Family visits, especially the conjugal ones, are analysed by these people as important factors to build a peaceful environment in the prison. However, the values and the practices brought by the inmates family on visiting days are perceived as corrupt forms of correctional control. In this context, family gatherings and conjugal visits become a source of intense bargaining, since prisoners and families demand for themselves their visits while the prison administration threats to remove them at any time. The conjugal visits may be suspended because, by Brazilian law, this is a benefit, not a right of the inmate. Thus, it can be removed in cases of bad behaviour of the prisoner or his/her companion. In short, the affective relations in prison are generally perceived as important things to the prison context, but in the eyes of the prison administration they should be fully annulled in order to not affect the institutional domain. Therefore, these measures become sources of high tension, and bargaining power in the prison context.