Prisoners have family: sufferings and resistances of incarcerated family members throughout a year of pandemic

Abstract

Objective: to investigate the sufferings and forms of resistance of women who participate in a virtual community aimed specifically at family members of prisoners. Methods: we surveyed the news reports on coronavirus in the Brazilian prison system shared in the virtual community during the first year of the pandemic. Through content analysis, we investigated the comments made by the followers of the virtual group to the posted news. Results: Between March and June 2020, visits to prisons were suspended, and access to information about inmates was scarce, causing family members to suffer and protest. From July to November 2020, the slow resumption of face-to-face visits to prisons produced other tensions in the family-prison dynamics. The resumption of visit suspension took place between December 2020 and March 2021. This period coincides with the beginning of vaccination, leading family members to make new claims to public bodies. Throughout the first year of the pandemic, families suffered from poor communication and contact with prisoners. Other recurrent complaints were lack of food and access to health care inside prisons. Family members protested both inside and outside social networks, denouncing the various types of violence carried out in prisons and fighting for the rights and lives of their incarcerated relatives. Conclusion: the reports obtained in the community reveal the seriousness of the health and humanitarian problems faced by prisoners and their families in the face of a lethal virus in a failed prison system.