Examining Health Protection of Detainees: The Brazilian Female Prison System in the Context of Covid-19 and National-International Legal Frameworks

Abstract

Women deprived of their liberty are a group particularly vulnerable to the new coronavirus because of the nature of the restrictions that are already imposed on them and their limited ability to take precautionary measures. In prisons and other places of detention, woman detainees lack the capacity to protect themselves mostly because many of the imprisionment stablishments are severely overcrowded and unhealthy, thus inaproppriate to the specific need urged by the female gender. To that matter, this analysis addresses the international and national legal frameworks to combat COVID-19, especially in female imprisonment scenarios, considering that they must receive special attention from the State due to their social and economic fragility in the face of the health crisis that has taken place in Brazil. The study begins with a bibliographical review through a qualitativa approach. It concludes that prisions and detainment centers in Brazil constituite a high-risck infection environment and, in order to diminish the constagious scale it should be adpoted a congregation of efforts between the judiciary and legislative branches of government in a contingency plan focused both on the reduction of detainees’ population and on first basic sanitarian-health care practices on women deprived of their liberty considering their gender specifics.