Incarcerated mothers and their children in Recife/Brazil.

There are a growing number of imprisoned individuals throughout the world. Approximately 1.1 million of these individuals are parents, who have approximately 2.3 million children under the care of third parties [1]. Children exposed to sudden trauma due to separation are more vulnerable to fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, depression and feelings of guilt and are more exposed to poverty and alcohol consumption [2]. It is possible that one of every 10 of these children will be incarcerated before reaching adulthood, which reveals the serious problem of the transmission of violence from one generation to the next [3]. A cross-sectional study was carried out involving 377 women incarcerated in the Women’s Penal Colony in the city of Recife (PE, Brazil) in order to investigate the relationship of incarcerated mothers and their children. Eighty (25.0%) of these women were under 24 years of age, which reveals the early initiation into a life of crime and may have contributed to the low level of schooling among the interviewees, as 259 (80.9%) reported less than 11 years of study. Guedes investigated detainees in the city of Brazil and describes similar results [4]. The most frequent reason for imprisonment was involvement with drugs. This finding is similar to that described by Poehlmann [5]. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the trafficking and use of narcotics between 1965 and 1985 more than tripled the number of convictions [6] (Table 1). Table 1 Frequency distribution of incarcerated women according to socioeconomic and demographic and sample characteristics, in the Women’s Penal Colony in Recife/PE/Brazil; August to December 2005 More than 50% of the women stated living in the city of Recife prior to prison (Table 1). However, the children’s visits to the prison revealed that 113 (36%) of the mothers never received any visits (Table 2). This finding differs from that described by Simmons [2]. However, Thompson and Harm state that children rarely visit their imprisoned mothers. The family disapproves; experiences difficulty in access; fears the prison environment; or fears exposing children to antisocial and delinquent behavior [7]. The lack of visits from their children does not appear to affect the security of the mothers regarding the care given to their children. More than 50% reported that their children were under good care, demonstrating the trust they have in the caregivers (Table 3). Thompson and Harm describe a similar finding [7]. This may be explained by the fact that the majority of women reported that maternal grandmothers were the caregivers of the children, which corroborates findings described in the literature [2, 5, 8]. Table 2 Parenting behind bars: incarcerated women’s experiences raising their children (n = 320) Table 3 Parenting behind bars: incarcerated women’s experiences raising their children (n = 320) The education of their children figured prominently among the mothers’ concerns. Many of the women investigated had at least one relative in prison, which demonstrates the scope of the transmission of violence from generation to generation and may explain the mothers’ worries regarding their children’s education. Reports of having suffered sexual and physical abuse in childhood and adolescence as well as violence perpetrated by partners in adulthood corroborate the findings of previous studies [9, 10]. These results stress the importance of intensifying efforts in the prevention of violence, especially in light of the data that demonstrate the transmission of violence between generations as a strong factor in perpetuating it.