The quadruple burden: Reproductive labor & prison visitation in Venezuela
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474520972484 |
| Author | Cory Fischer-Hoffman |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The quadruple burden:
Reproductive labor &
prison visitation
in Venezuela
Cory Fischer-Hoffman
Lafayette College, USA
Abstract
Utilizing the Feminist-Marxist lens of reproductive labor, I examine how the caring
work and bodies of women who visit prisons are central to an analysis of the relation-
ship of incarceration and social reproduction under capitalism. My research is based on
participant observation and interviews with women prison visitors in 2014– 2015 in
Venezuela. I analyze how women bring food, clean laundry and otherwise approved
items; they take long journeys, wait in lines for hours and pass through an invasive strip
search so that they can visit their loved ones in prisons. This work is even more
burdensome because the prisons operating under carceral self-rule—run by armed
organizations of inmates through a de-facto privatization that centers not just survival
but profit —fail to provide even the most basic necessities. I argue that the work of
caring for a loved one in this context creates an additional burden on top of a job,
housework, and community activism. This fourth shift requires that women’s labor be
incorporated into a neoliberal carceral apparatus and also demonstrates that while the
carceral zone is porous, the bodies of poor racialized women are used to enforce the
prison border.
Keywords
caring work, housework, prisons, prison visitation, reproductive labor, Venezuela
Corresponding author:
Cory Fischer-Hoffman, Lafayette College, Oechsle Center for Global Education 213, Easton, PA 18042-
1768, USA.
Email: fischeco@lafayette.edu
Punishment & Society
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474520972484
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2022, Vol. 24(1) 95–115
Introduction
Every weekend women load up shopping bags full of food, clean laundry and
otherwise approved items. They carry these heavy bags on long journeys via
public transit, sometimes children in tow, wait in lines for hours and pass through
an invasive strip search so that they can visit their loved ones in prison. This work
is more burdensome in Venezuela where the prisons operating under carceral self-
rule— run by armed organizations of inmates through a de-facto privatization—
fail to provide even the most basic necessities. In this article, I will examine the
caring work encompassed in prison visits and how reproductive labor is incorpo-
rated into the neoliberal carceral apparatus. I ask how the women conducting
prisons experience their labor as mediated by the state and what the limits are
of this quadruple burden, especially in the face of ongoing crises in Venezuela.
In 2017, the total prison population in Venezuela was 57,096 (178 per 100,000
people). Despite this number being an all-time high for Venezuela— the prison
population hovered around 20,000 people between 1999–2009 before dramatically
increasing—the country still has a lower rate of imprisonment than Chile,
Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina. Demonstrating a slight decrease in
rates of incarceration, 46,775 people were interned in the 41 prisons that make
up the centralized penal system within the country in 2018 and 94% of which were
men (Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones, 2018). Nearly two-thirds of people in
prison have yet to go to trial; only 36% of the prison population is serving a
sentence. While no current data exists on the social or racial makeup of the
prison population, interviews and participant observation provide evidence that
a racialized underclass is disproportionately incarcerated in Venezuela and thus
that the women who provide care tend to be poor or working class.
During the neoliberal era in the late 1980s, the Venezuelan government aban-
doned the prison system. With growing rates of incarceration and chronic over-
crowding, groups of incarcerated people solidified long-existing hierarchies as a
means of providing social order among the penal population. Military-issued
weapons were trafficked into the prison by state functionaries and most prison
staff were exiled from the interior, leaving prisoners to manage the day-to-day life.
This carceral world (el mundo) is governed by a strict code of conduct, particular
linguistic styles, and a hierarchical internal governance structure that orders the
penal population, resolves disputes, centralizes the distribution of goods (largely
through a highly regulated market economy) and extracts surplus from the prison
population through an obligatory weekly tax (la causa) (Antillano et al., 2016;
Crespo and Bola~
nos, 2009). The surplus revenue is spent on costs associated with
running the prison, it is invested in infrastructure and what remains is concentrated
with the prison leadership (Carro), it is transformed into profit. By the early 2000’s
until roughly 2015, the majority of prisoners in Venezuela were incarcerated in a
facility under carceral self-rule, relegating correctional officers and National
Guards members to conduct counts, guard the perimeter, and maintain external
prison-related business.
96 Punishment & Society 24(1)
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