Dá nada pra nós (?): o real do encarceramento de adolescentes

Abstract

The general objective of this study was to analyze the activities and sociability that mediated (and/or mediate) the human development of teenagers deprived of their freedom. We start from materialistic premise that places the activity as the foundation of human development and the approach of critical criminology that comprehends the crime as the product of social genesis. We search to understand the concrete dimensions of the situation experienced by these young people, their material living conditions, the social relations in which they were and are involved, the functions and meanings present in their activities before and during the deprivation of liberty and the impact of these on their development, focusing primarily on work and education as the main instruments of humanization. The research in question has made use of qualitative methodology for investigation and analysis and were used as major instruments semi-structured individual interviews, discussion groups and field observations. Our analyzes showed that, despite the reforms in the law, the socio-educational system as part of the punitive system of the State, continues to exercise its historic function of reproduction and maintenance of relations of class domination, through the stigmatization of the popular classes illegality, which contributes for the imposition of the precarious work. In addition, deprivation of liberty doesn't meet its main purpose of entering the young people in practices under the law, guaranteeing them a decent life, because it always offers the same options of precarious training and work that they had already rejected when were in freedom. The context of incarceration also reinforces the incorporation of the values of punitive culture and capitalist ideology that produce individualism, meritocracy, competition, domination and exploitation of man by man himself, contributing to the reproduction of violence and for setting the young people in activities which they intended to keep them out. From this reality, we propose reflections and actions in favor of the deconstruction of punitive practices, coupled with structural changes that include, mainly, overcoming inequality, to interrupt this spiral of impoverishment and degradation of human life helped by the prison.