Imprisonment and migrant women

Abstract

Historically, there has been a different way of punishing men and women who have violated criminal or social laws. For women, a type of treatment and control has been developed that has defined them as transgressors not only of criminal laws, but also of their feminine condition. This double condition has led to severe discrimination in the way punishment is applied, which in fact has been forged and consolidated historically since the appearance of the first women’s prisons up to the present day. In the current framework of policies of control and criminalization of foreign population flows, many migrant women, especially Latin American, enter the illegal drug business, due to economic needs, unemployment or as a survival strategy.(...)