Catarina Frois, researcher at CRIA-IUL, developed an ethnographic work in a female prison, having conducted monthly visits for a year. This experience, revealed in her recent book “Female Imprisonment”, unique in the Portuguese prison panorama, allowed her to observe the prison context from a perspective very close to its inmates, by exposure to the routines, happiness and anguish of daily life, experiences and limits of 'incarceration'. However, Odemira imprisonment proved to be a very particular case study.

As a researcher she has long studied the Portuguese prison scenario but found Odemira prison different from other prisons in many respects.

In this part 1/3, Catarina Frois explains that 'Odemira is peculiar because it must be one of the few prisons in Portugal, due to its small size, which is not overcrowded'.

Nonetheless, this specific case shows much of the living experience of a prison. Learn more (audio only in Portuguese).