Mapping Visible and Invisible Punishments for Women in Pretrial Courts of Colombia

• In Event: Rutgers at 50: Advancing International Criminology

Abstract

In this paper, we document visible and invisible punishments for women in pretrial courts. Drawing on prior work, we define "visible" punishments as those tied to explicit judicial decisions, such as "preventive" detention, and "invisible" punishments as reflective of a broader range of exchanges and discourses signaling judgment and condemnation in the form of "off-the-record" remarks by attorneys, or justifications for actual decisions by judges. We draw on systematic observations of court hearings (n=344) and accompanying field notes compiled in Bogota and Cali in 2016-2017 to explore the range, specificity, and correlates of these two forms of scrutiny and punishment, and we attempt to make sense of them by bridging theories about the logic of the courtroom workgroup with more general frameworks about the gendering of justice and punishment. We situate this discussion in the context of Rutgers' contributions to the study of inequality and punishment within and beyond US institutions.

Authors

• Andres F. Rengifo, Rutgers University

• Lorena Avila Jaimes, Rutgers University - Newark