Discurso, moralidade e punição: juventude em conflito com a lei e família nas representações do judiciário

Abstract

The present study aimed to analyze the representations and speeches produced by the justice operators about the young people (aged between 15 and 18 incomplete) who committed infractional acts. For that, a field work was carried out in the Childhood and Youth Court of the Forum of a region located in the Baixada Fluminense / RJ. The methodological resources used corresponded to non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews. A profile of a young person (black, poor and living in peripheral areas) who appears in court hearings has been found, so young people in conflict with the law are stigmatized and represented as subjects of crime, someone you'd expect to commit other crimes. In this sense, the punitive discourse, the selective incarceration of black youth and the criminalization of poverty and drugs were also pointed out. It is emphasized how moral discourses are present in the speeches and in the actions of the justice operators, acting as much in the construction of the representations created on the young in conflict with the law, as with respect to their families. Likewise, the conceptions about "structured" and "unstructured" families present in the operators' speeches, and the mothers of the young that appear to the operators as responsible for the behaviors practiced by the young, are also analyzed. Finally, it was verified how the view of the irregular situation, coupled with representation about the young, makes them objects of State law, besides the moral role of a repressive "father", exercised by the judiciary. Disbelief in young people's speeches at court hearings, linked to the production of speeches concerning the unstructured family and their lack of control and management of young people's lives, together with the processes of incrimination of these young people was verified.