Obstetrical violence: incarcerated women and handcuffs use

Abstract

This paper proposes a reflection on art. 3 of Decree n. 8858/2016, which prohibits the handcuffs use on women prisoners in any unit of the national penitentiary system during the period of labor, on the parturient’s journey between the prison unit and the hospital unit, and also after the birth of the child during During which she is hospitalized. The objective is to demonstrate how the subject is regulated in the Brazilian legislation and to analyze if the disrespect to this rule characterizes obstetric violence, since it implies a procedure that confers inhuman treatment to the woman, immobilizing her at the moment of giving birth, mainly because it is A group of women who are extremely vulnerable, who are the women taken to jail. The relevance and importance of this discussion is also supported by the approval of Law no. 13434/2017, which added a single paragraph to Art. 292 of the Brazilian Criminal Procedure Code, prohibiting the use of handcuffs under the conditions described. From a descriptive character, using the method of deductive approach, will be used existing bibliographic studies on the subject, besides laws and jurisprudence. It is concluded that even with the existing normative apparatus, this repeated and arbitrary practice is recurrent, which reveals the need to adopt public policies that recognize the handcuffs use in women prisoners during the puerperal state as obstetric violence and consequently genre violence.

Submissão: 2017-05-02

Aceite: 2017-08-12