INTRODUCTION

The words of Norberto Bobbio aptly translate the question that will permeate this analysis of imprisonment of women in Brazil:

At the international level Brazil is in fact a signatory to various both declaratory and conventional instruments for promoting and protecting human rights, which are applicable to incarcerated women. Domestically, accompanying those international norms, the Federal Constitution of 1988 chose as one of the foundations of the Brazilian State respect for human dignity (Federal Constitution (CF), Article 1, item III), which is the basis for the entire international system for protecting those rights. Other constitutional dispositions, as well as a series of infra-constitutional standard-setting instruments, establish rights for persons deprived of liberty, obviously applicable to women, as well as certain mechanisms for exercising them. It may thus be seen that there is a minimum legislative framework in Brazil, which certainly needs improvement, especially regarding the condition of incarcerated women, and which needs to be accompanied by a political choice that seeks to implement effective instruments capable of guaranteeing such protection in practice. Even so, a positive evolution in this regard can be observed.

The perception and understanding of female criminality by Brazilian institutions has evolved and been modified. The first female prison units in Brazil began during the 1930s and 1940s, and were the Female Institute for Social Re-adaptation in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, begun in 1937, the Penitentiary for Women of São Paulo and the Women's Penitentiary of Bangu in the municipality of Rio Janeiro, inaugurated in 1942.

Contrary to the usual practice, the institutions mentioned above were not initially administered directly by the penitentiary system, but instead by a Catholic religious order, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd of Angers. Their mission was the moral cure of “fallen” women, those in situations of abandonment, prostitution and conflict with the law.