Women and the criminal justice system: Drug mules, social selectivity and recent changes on the female incarceration in Brazil

The aim of this article is to analyze the recent changes on the patterns of female incarceration rate in Brazil, in the context of the social selectivity of the Brazilian criminal justice system, based on the gender studies proposed by critical criminology and the studies, on social science, about the particular role of the drug traffic on the Brazilian urban peripheries. The debate over the meaning of these changes, as all the questions concerning the relations between women and crime, is punctuated by two themes: the difference, now the central axis of contemporary French philosophy and; the exceptionality of the female deviation, within the general framework of masculine and feminine representations. The relevance of this study lies in to understand the causes that promote the increase in the number of women involved with the criminal justice system in Brazil, besides the need for reflection on gender relations with racial, class, ethnic, sexual and regional differences of identity discursively constructed, which are important for the understanding of the social selectivity of the Brazilian criminal system. On the one hand, the phenomenon reflects the trend of intensification of the punitive state, and on the other hand, within the framework of gender studies, lies in an intersection point of new questions about the sexual division of labor, female criminality and the feminization of poverty.