Entre a tranca e o mundão: a representação da socioeducação pelas adolescentes em medida de internação em Recife/PE.

Abstract

The empirical research took place in the Juvenile Educational Center incarceration, called Santa Luzia, from Recife, Pernambuco State, Brazil, the only institution in the entire State with the assignment to perform public service in implementing custodial measures to female adolescents. Using the methodologies of interviews and participant observation, this study attempts to understand the representation of these adolescents about socio-education, through their experiences with the incarceration measure and, from this, the collected data were analyzed through the elaboration of categories. At first, it is made a rescue of the theoretical lenses of critical criminology, which guides the interpretations during the research, however highlighting the importance of seeing from the Latin American and Brazilian’s realities. Besides, it points out the authoritarian root that remains in Brazilian’s way of sociability, which has perpetuated, even with the transition from the Irregular Status Doctrine to the Integral Protection Doctrine. Thus, after interviews with 24 adolescents and observation of their routines for two months, for two days a week, in alternating shifts, in their reports was possible to identify three categories that synthesize their representations about this measure. Firstly, the meanings attributed by them to the socio-educational measure were mostly related to punishment and retribution, and very little to emancipation, so that their perceptions about socio-education reflect in "I'm paying for what I've done". Then, it was verified the centrality of evaluations, since the decision about the period of institutionalization must me produced during the intervention, by the reports produced by the institution’s staff, which will support the juridical decision to release the adolescent. In this way, their behaviors are designed to meet institutional expectations, because they know "everything goes to the report". Finally, it was verified that the socio-educational measure of incarceration functions as a dividing line in their biographies, so their lives are divided between before and after, revealing themselves in "how I was before and how I am now”. In this way, the socio-education results in mortification processes of subjectivity.