O cuidado e a saúde das mulheres negras em privação de liberdade: análise de uma unidade prisional no interior da Bahia

Abstract

This study is about the phenomenon of imprisonment in Brazil and highlights its intrinsic relations with racism, focusing on the female prison population of the country, which is the third largest in the world. The health and care of black women in prisons is one of the dimensions that this study has sought to understand. Through the field Anthropology of Health and from a decolonial and intersectional approach between gender, race and class, an analysis of health practices was made at the Regional Prison Nilton Gonçalves, in the city of Vitória da Conquista in Bahia. The discussed in this paper are results of semi-structured interviews with ten interlocutors, in which it was sought to know how black women experience the prison system and how this reality impacts their health and illness processes, as well as identify how they are triggered as notions of care, both by women in deprivation of liberty, and by the health professionals and prison officers of this Prison. With the results obtained it was possible to establish the impossibility of reflecting on the Brazilian prison system, without racializing and seeking to reveal its complex dimensions, such as which are deeply embedded with the maintenance of a genocidal project, perpetrated against a black and poor population of the country. In addition, illness in the prison system is a reality and as diseases identified as predominant among women imprisoned in the Prison Unit studied are hypertension, depression, anxiety and Borderline Syndrome. Some of the senses of care for these imprisoned women are related to their memories outside prison, as well as to the practices of self-care and care that are collectivized between cell partners. With this, a relevance of this research is in reinforcing an urgent need for agendas for discharge, creating effective alternatives from guaranteeing care and comprehensive health for a prison population, taking as perspective the abolitionism of criminal law.