From neighborhood to prison: women and the war on drugs in Portugal

Abstract

Recent profound changes are reconfiguring portuguese prison populations, changes which ultimately lie with the shape of retail drug economies and with the massive styles of repression the war on drugs came to induce on crime control. Indeed the implications of this reconfiguration call for a rediscussion of the theoretical status of the prison and of the boundary that separates it from outside worlds. While challenging the core perspectives that shaped the literature about these institutions, this paper will examine the reasons why this transformation is especially pronounced in women's prisons. Adopting a comparative stance, it will focus on the ways women participate on the drug economy and how portuguese poor urban neighborhoods present a particular interplay between categories of gender, race/ethnicity, and class.