Mass Media, Politics and Punitiveness: Consolidating the Hegemonic Discourse on Juvenile Crime in Brazil

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

To understand punitive practices of a particular historical moment it is essential to know the discourses that mobilize it. Faced with the reality of the growing incarceration of adolescents in Brazil in the past ten years, this study aims to identify the interactions between political and media discourses in the production of a hegemonic knowledge on juvenile crime that bases the adoption of repressive policies. For that purpose, the work analyzes parliamentary speeches about youth criminality in the last ten years (2003-2012), and compares it with the discourse studied in a sample from the most important Brazilian newspaper, Folha de S. Paulo, during the same period. The findings point to an ambiguous representation of the adolescent offender. It moves from a social determinism that perceives the youngsters as victims of social inequality, through a perception of the slums youth as victimizers of the society, and gets in the representation of the dangerous adolescent with incapacitation proposals. We can perceive a deep interaction between both types of discourse, consolidating a hegemonic representation on youth crime in the society, legitimizing the adoption of violent and selectively targeted actions by the police and Judiciary against black and poor boys in the Brazilian suburbs.

Author

• Marília De Nardin Budó, Meridional Faculty (BRAZIL)