"Good bandit is ... ... dead bandit. As long as this thug is not your son. " Not wishing to be identified, like most of the other mothers of prisoners, the 67-year-old delivered the sentence while she waited to see her son on a day of visits at Santa Maria State Penitentiary (Pesm). The statement, which carried a mixture of revolt, courage and pain, also seemed to echo the sentiment that so many mothers reported to the Diary. Women who did not give up their children and justified being the maternal love, the only source of resistance. While they serve their sentence in the prison system, other condemnations and violence fall on the progenitors. They are condemned by society and by their own family. Many suffer from self-condemnation and seek, in their trajectories, some flawed act that justifies the conduct of their children.

​

Text: Pâmela Rubin Matge