Prison (im)permeability and non-visitation in Brazil: carceral violence from the standpoint of the ‘disfavoured’

Bahia is the Brazilian state that incarcerates the smallest proportion of its population and has an incarceration rate (97.4) much lower than the national average (329.2). However, these numbers tell us little about the harms inflicted on Bahians in the name of public security. Drawing on field research carried out in/around Feminina (a women’s prison), during two periods (2010–2012 and 2016–2019), we approach carceral violence from the standpoint of ‘ pessoal da Feminina’, a category used by the imprisoned and non-imprisoned people most impacted by this prison to refer to themselves. Our analysis is oriented by the insights of Black feminist scholar-activists. Building on theorisations of the ‘sequelae’ (deadly after-effects) of gendered and anti-Black police killings, we turn attention to the injurious effects of imprisonment and the interlocking nature of carceral and police violence. Our interlocutors are Black women whose lives have been shaped by police lethality and various institutions of confinement. Taking seriously their claim that ‘ pessoal ’ are always disadvantaged, and centring their interpretations, exposes limitations of a set of increasingly common tropes in the critical prison studies literature, including narratives about carceral porosity, the provision of assistance/care and the abandonment of incarcerated women. Ultimately, we show how the relative impermeability of Feminina inflicts gendered and racialised sequelae by constraining horizontal and bi-directional exchanges of care among its ‘ pessoal ’ and producing non-visitation . We conclude that it is necessary to think critically about the concepts that structure prison research if we are to challenge rather than reinforce calls for more and ‘better’ top-down carceral assistance .