Tots Behind the Bars - Unidad 33 Prison

While there is prison cell which looks like a [5-Star Hotel], there are even more sad story behind the bars…

Carolina Camps, 34, is a freelance photographer based in Argentina who develops her own documentary projects, often focused on people at society’s margins. She has worked with Reuters and leading Argentine newspapers such as Clarin and La Nacion. In the following story she relates her experiences of getting close enough to women prisoners in La Plata, Argentina, to portray their lives through her images.

The Unidad (Unit) 33 prison in Los Hornos near La Plata, the capital of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. In this medium-security prison 273 female inmates, several of them pregnant, live with their 63 children who are allowed to remain with their mothers until they are four years old.

The children were born in prison and have never seen daylight outside the bars. They don’t know what an animal or a car is, or what exists outside this lockup. They are children that don’t smile.

For those whose mothers are in prison for years, the arrival of a fourth birthday is the most painful day because the children must leave to live with their family outside, if they have one, or in a state home if they do not.

The vast majority jailed at Prison 33 are there pending trial; they haven’t been convicted of a crime. In Buenos Aires’ provincial prisons, about 12 percent of 780 female prisoners are pregnant or already living with their children behind bars.

“Bringing these images to light was my way of freeing them.” Stated Carolina Camps.