Full text
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| Author(s): |
Gustavo Martineli Massola
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Psicologia (IP/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2005-10-03 |
| Examining board members: |
Eda Terezinha de Oliveira Tassara;
Hector Omar Ardans Bonifacino;
Jose Moura Goncalves Filho;
Edwiges Ferreira de Mattos Silvares;
Lidio de Souza
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| Advisor: | Eda Terezinha de Oliveira Tassara |
| Field of knowledge: | Humanities - Psychology |
| Indexed in: |
Banco de Dados Bibliográficos da USP-DEDALUS;
Index Psi Teses - IP/USP |
| Location: | Universidade de São Paulo. Biblioteca do Instituto de Psicologia; HM251; M419s |
| Abstract | |
The jail located at Bragança Paulista (São Paulo, Brazil) started been administered, from January first, 1996, by a non-governmental organization in accordance with the government of the state of São Paulo. The Association for the Protection and Assistance of Prisoners (APAC) reduced the prison budget, improved the jail cond itions and hired professionals like psychologists and social servers to work with prisoners. The volunteers from this association developed a close relationship with the prisoners. This jail has been seen as a successful example of prison joint administration between the community and the state, capable of rehabilitating prisoners, and was chosen as model for the building of the Centers of Rehabilitation - minimum-security unities - by the state government, thus presenting itself as the realization of the modern penitentiary utopia. This present research - of an exploratory and descriptive type - uses the ethnographic method to study this jail. The researcher visited the jail once a week during three years, and took the role of volunteer. The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the relationship established between the institutional agents (volunteers, prisoners, prison guards), and to understand the links between this prison experience and the penal system as a whole. The study concludes that APAC was not a unique experience (it is possible to find other similar experiences). Order inside was sustained by an alliance between volunteers and prisoners\' leaders that stopped prisoners from making use of prison values. The transfer of prisoners to other prisons was seen as the most important punitive ceremony in the institution. It implied necessarily the existence of a failed penitentiary system used as a threat to disobedient prisoners. The main characteristics of this experience were: administrative isolation, economic preponderancy, management emphasis, community participation, legality regime, limitation of prison subculture, and reduction of physical violence. They led to an improvement of prisoners\' judgment capacity, but they didn\'t produce more autonomy, thus failing in the aim of rehabilitation. The social function of this experience was the re-establishment of the penitentiary ideal (imprisonment as rehabilitation), thus serving an ideological function. Transfer as punishment showed that this experience strategically helped the reproduction of the penal system, justifying its existence as necessary for dangerous prisoners. The transformation of the jail into a Center of Rehabilitation implied a re-appropriation of this experience by the state, whic h had assigned its police power to the association. The formalization of the relationship between prisoners and volunteers that followed the transformation made clear the prior revolutionary characteristics of this relationship, showing its contradictions in face of the penal system. This research states that a technical intervention is not capable of changing social relations within the penitentiary system, being necessary to restate the politic aspect in these interventions. (AU) | |