Safekeeping of children of women prisoners and the ecology of human development

Abstract

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14244/198271991195

In Brazil, when a mother is arrested, there are three possibilities to guard her young children: in shelter, in a foster family or in the prison nursery. The aim of this article is to revisit and engage with authors of human development, as Spitz, Bowlby and Bronfenbrenner, to understand the influences of imprisonment on children’s development and their guard possibilities. This article also draws on theoretical studies of the prison, as Foucault and Goffman, to advance the analysis of the ecology of human development and the prison environment. The mother-child separation, sudden or not, due to imprisonment and its possible impacts – as the change in the type of custody – can influence the children’s developmental environment, changing their relationship in the mother-child dyad and consequently force then to face ecological transitions that can affect their development. This article concluded that the prison environment carries a meaning of punishment and social segregation that interferes throughout the developmental process of children of women prisoners, inside the prison, and their guard processes, in shelters and foster families.

Keywords: Ecology of human development, Children of women in prison, Guard, Social vulnerability.