Abstract

This article is based on two research studies conducted on the Uruguayan Juvenile Justice System (UJJS); the first study (2011) examined female adolescent incarceration contexts, and the second one (2016) focused on female adolescents in their passage through a program of non-custodial measures. This research is aimed at understanding gendered punishment practices performed on women who are subjected to judicial measures in the UJJS, in order to give visibility to an issue that is usually silenced, among other reasons because the number of women subjected to these measures is low and due to a hegemonic male model in adolescent offense construction. Following a qualitative methodology research, combined with an ethnographic approach, I discuss the singularities characterizing the passage of female adolescents through the UJJS, by applying two strategies: (re)constructing a lost domesticity and managing bodies and sexualities. El presente artículo surge de dos investigaciones realizadas en el sistema penal juvenil uruguayo (SPJU); la primera (2011) aborda los contextos de privación de libertad de las adolescentes mujeres, la segunda (2016) trabaja con las adolescentes mujeres en su pasaje por un programa de medidas no privativas de libertad. Los objetivos de estas investigaciones buscan conocer las prácticas de castigo generizadas destinadas a las mujeres que cumplen medidas judiciales en el SPJU, de modo de visibilizar una temática que tiende a ser acallada, entre otras cosas por el escaso número de mujeres que transitan por estas medidas y por el modelo hegemónico masculino en las construcciones de la infracción adolescente. A través de una metodología cualitativa de investigación, con enfoque etnográfico discuto las singularidades de los tránsitos de las adolescentes por el SPJU, a través de dos estrategias; la (re)construcción de la domesticidad perdida y la gestión de los cuerpos y las sexualidades.

Highlights

  • In this article I discuss gendered punishment practices performed on female adolescents subjected to judicial measures in the Uruguayan Juvenile Justice System (UJJS), within the framework of the State institution tasked with regulating their enforcement

  • Gender is an analytical category (Scott 1996) that intersects with other categories, such as race and social class, composing a heterogeneous field embodied in the kind of treatment designed on female adolescents depending on their deviance from the penal framework in force at a certain socio-historical time

  • It should be mentioned that the option of semi-imprisonment does not exist as such for female adolescents, so the discussion included in this article refers to the scenarios of incarceration and non-custodial measures

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Summary

Introduction

In this article I discuss gendered punishment practices performed on female adolescents subjected to judicial measures in the Uruguayan Juvenile Justice System (UJJS), within the framework of the State institution tasked with regulating their enforcement. Judith Butler (2001) contributes to this argument by problematizing the sex-gender dichotomy, a binarism that brings the nature-culture divide back to the forefront She proposes that sex-gender distinction is a product of power relations that produce a “prediscursive sex”. Within this framework, it is relevant to include multireferential criteria, such as race and social class, among others, and a socio-historic dimension framing the social practices, among them punishment practices, in their genealogical dimension (López-Gallego 2016). Feminist criminologists (Birgin 2000a, 2000b, Smart 2000, Pitch 2003, Carlen and Worrall 2004) integrate gender relations as a means of control and domination in the criminal area, justice systems being a privileged area in the construction of socio-penal control practices associated to gendered punishment practices. A hierarchy of disorders is due to a “differentiation of moral judgements” (Fassin 2018)

Considerations about the Uruguayan juvenile justice system
Methodological strategy
Incarceration center
Non-custodial measures
Gendered punishment practices in the UJJS
Strategies to (re)construct a lost domesticity
Strategies for body and sexuality management

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