Social Rehabilitation and Penal Abolitionism as a Path for Transformative Justice

• In Event: Social Explanations to Violent Crimes

Abstract

This paper is the adaptation of a research co-authored with Salo de Carvalho (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), which led to a chapter in the volume “Social Rehabilitation and Criminal Justice,” edited by Federica Coppola and Adriano Martufi (forthcoming, 2023), and the recently published book “Penal Abolitionism and Transformative Justice in Brazil” (Routledge, 2023). The work aims to address the requirements for an abolitionist understanding of social rehabilitation and to support transformative justice as a practice of social transformation in countries with great social inequality. The topic is approached through an analysis of the Brazilian context, where the normative call for the ideal of rehabilitation as the primary justification of punishment was incorporated by law, though not effectively implemented, and then overshadowed by aggressive policing and mass incarceration policies at the end of the 20th century. The paper presents guiding proposals in discussing social rehabilitation on the assumption that punishment and imprisonment are obstacles, not a means, to achieving it. Penal abolitionism rejects the normative models of rehabilitation that fail to point the finger at the penitentiary institution as part of the problem and not the solution for it, thus distancing itself from correctionalism, ideas of social defense, and any other pathological conceptions of individual behavior. As such, social rehabilitation and a critical view of Brazilian restorative justice practices are considered part of the policies that can curb the damages caused by these punitive practices and penal institutions. In sum, personal conflicts within the purview of the criminal justice system can be an opportunity to address the structural violence behind them, fostering a communal interpretation of the concept of social rehabilitation.

Author

• ANDRE RIBEIRO GIAMBERARDINO, Federal University of Paranà (Brazil)