Punished beyond their sentence: the invisibility of women deprived of liberty in Tocantins and the urgency of gender-sensitive policies in prisons

Abstract

This article investigates the humanitarian crisis in the Brazilian prison system, characterized by the Supreme Federal Court as an "Unconstitutional State of Affairs" (ADPF 347). The general objective is to analyze the invisibility of women prisoners in the Brazilian prison system, with an emphasis on women's units in Tocantins, from the perspective of criminal policies and a gender perspective, based on a bibliographic and documentary review. The research is grounded in the commitments of the UN 2030 Agenda, aligning with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) No. 5 (Gender Equality) and no. 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions), which are fundamental for the promotion of resilient institutions that guarantee rights. Through a qualitative approach and deductive method, the study shows that the androcentric prison architecture and the lack of material assistance, especially regarding menstrual health and hygiene, transform the deprivation of liberty into an additional and degrading punishment for the female body. In Tocantins, the diagnosis of the four women's prison units reveals a critical scenario of improvised structural adaptations, lack of nurseries, and suppression of the right to conjugal visits, constituting institutional abandonment that violates the principle of human dignity. It is concluded that there is an urgent need to implement gender-sensitive prison policies, based on the Bangkok Rules and the Just Sentence Plan (CNJ), as an indispensable path to the humanization of penal execution in the state.