Institutionalizing Exclusion

Abstract

In the early days of my visits to Odemira I was met with an atmosphere of “poverty” that only over time I gradually managed to interpret and put into context. Although it manifested itself differently throughout the inmate population, it was possible to identify common features—the generalized economic problems of their families (both their own as their family of origin), histories of alcoholism and drug use, parental negligence and other forms of maltreatment and domestic violence. In this Chapter the analysis focus on the relationship involving these women and a wide range of public and non-government assistance and care institutions, such as the Child and Youth Protection Services, the Victim Support Association, town councils and local organizations. The aim is to observe the problems faced by some of these women prior to invarceration, and show that these were largely endemic rather than merely circumstancial; that is, deriving from structural and wide-ranging characteristics of contemporary Portuguese society.