Gendering Transnational Criminality: The Case of Women’s Imprisonment in Peru

Abstract

AbstractThis article presents a sociological and historical analysis of female imprisonment in Peru. The authors show how, from the beginning of the republican era until the twenty-first century, patriarchal cultural models implicating sexual, racial, and social dimensions frame the domestication of female bodies. The article also demonstrates the transnationalization of criminality and mass prison building that characterize the dynamics of women’s imprisonment in Peru. These trends are linked with the growth of neoliberalism, which has significant consequences for the global growth of female marginalization. Such phenomena, which undoubtedly shape women’s criminality worldwide, are reflected in the Peruvian female prison population.