Reports of a struggle: Prison, gender, and activism in an association of prisoners’ relatives

Abstract

Abstract The article explores the connections between gender, prison, and activism in AMPARAR, an association that works with prisoners’ families in São Paulo, Brazil. The ethnography is developed in the activities of the association and in the monitoring of the connections mobilised by these activities. AMPARAR’s work is located in an institutional web that includes non-governmental organisations and public institutions that produce both a violating state and a state that claims rights and guarantees. AMPARAR and the family members articulated by the association put a human face and body to complaints, and identify violence and humiliation perpetrated not only on their bodies, but on their husbands and children deprived of their freedom. Gender and sexuality are languages that allow such evocation and contribute to women producing a place of mediators and rapporteurs for the abuses that occur within prisons.