Criminalized Women and Health in the Prison System: policies, practices and motherhoods in São Luís (MA) and Manaus (AM)

• Grant number: 25/14638-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: December 01, 2025
• End date: July 31, 2029
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Collective Health - Public Health
• Principal Investigator: José Miguel Nieto Olivar
• Grantee: Milena Novais Oliveira Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Saúde Pública (FSP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 21/06897-9 - Cosmopolitics of care in the end of the world: gender, borders, and pluri-epistemic assemblages with public health, AP.JP2

Abstract

This doctoral project aims to investigate the connections between the health field and the prison system, with an emphasis on the health, suffering, and motherhood experiences of criminalized women-both those deprived of liberty and survivors of incarceration-in São Luís, Maranhão, and Manaus, Amazonas. The research is based on the recognition that the processes of illness and care experienced by these women cannot be dissociated from the punitive logic, institutional flows, and public policies that structure access to healthcare in prison. Based on an ethnographic approach, the study seeks to map institutional mechanisms, understand the interlocutors' perceptions of healthcare, analyze care practices and survival strategies, and investigate the impacts of motherhood in this context. The methodology also includes workshops with women imprisoned at the Women's Prison Unit (UPFEM) in São Luís and monitoring the activities of the Coletivo Entre Elas (Entre Elas Collective) in Manaus. Data analysis will consider the experiences of the field interlocutors and quantitative data from the national survey on prison health. Through a thorough description and observation of everyday practices of care, healthcare, suffering, and resistance, it will be possible to understand how gender, racial, and class inequalities permeate prison life. (AU)