The larger prison experience: An invisible social punishment
The larger prison experience includes the influence of penal institutions on people who are not confined, such as relatives of detainees, who experience a particular kind of imprisonment. This experience is a social punishment, made up of the four main ordeals analyzed in this article. It is a situation in which the relatives of detainees, usually women, who decide to maintain a link with those in prison undertake the important work of caring. After looking at the various kinds of support offered by relatives, we see that the larger prison experience appears, paradoxically, to be a social situation that continues to assign women a traditional and largely invisible position while also offering them the opportunity to influence both the individual in prison and the conditions of their relationship.