Penal policies, prison, and gender: Contemporary feminist debates and intersecting perspectives from different latitudes

Abstract

The prison has been understood as the modern institution par excellence for the exercise of penal social control, a place where several prohibited violences are allowed and where others, widely normalized, such as gender violence, are relocated in their own terms. In recent years, feminism has vigorously questioned the possibility that criminal-penal justice and the prison institution can not only reproduce, but also to struggle against phenomena of violence - a debate that has given rise to two dichotomized lines known as ‘carceral feminism’ and anti-carceral or abolitionist feminism. In this article, we intend to relocate this debate and to provide some critical contributions that allow the overcoming of this dichotomy. If, on the one hand, we oppose to the punitive feminist turn and to the hypostasis of feminist claims translated into justice policies; on the other hand, we also do not seek the idealization of the action ‘beyond the penitentiary’ or the recognition of an intrinsically radical character to justice processes made ‘on the margins’ of formal institutions, including the prison. For this purpose, we will rely on theoretical explorations and recent observations from Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. Finally, the implications of this spectrum of definition of criminal-penal and community policies will be considered.