Breaking the prison-centric box: Reimagining women’s reentry in Portugal

• In Event: Reintegration & Desistance

Abstract

In line with critical reentry studies and drawing on empirical fieldwork with women on reentry pathways in Portugal, this article discusses how current reentry practices and institutions simultaneously serve as forms of social control and contribute to the failure of individual reintegration. The paper argues this is in part because current efforts in Portugal neglect the structural nature of individuals’ experiences and fail to consider the long-term impact of imprisonment. Both of these factors, box these women’s lives and identities into an enduring carceral web. By unpacking and critiquing the prison’s role within the broader reentry industry, including its practical but also symbolic presence post-release, the article draws on conversations with the study’s participants, to carve out a framework through which we can conceptually, politically and ethically rethink and reimagine reentry outside the traditional domains of conventional sanctions. Ultimately the paper urges us to consider reentry as part of a broader social justice, multi-sectoral effort that remains politically sensitive to the links between prison and gender injustice. The paper ends by mapping how we might position reentry scholarship within broader efforts to imagine justice beyond prisons particularly for women and sets an agenda for future research around a socially just, integrative strategy that can do away from the prison.

Author

• Silvia Gomes, University of Warwick