Penas e medidas alternativas e serviço social : entre a garantia de direitos e o controle social

Abstract

This thesis introduces the research carried out about the social assistant work in the execution of penalties and alternative measures and their interfaces with the contemporaneous ideology of social control. The study of qualitative nature is grounded on the theoretical and methodological approach guided by the critical and dialectical method. The investigation was performed through bibliographic research and documental analysis. The research universe is composed by the following information sources: Master degree dissertations, papers of under graduation courses, scientific articles in journals, annals of the main Social Service events and documents produced by regulatory agencies for penalties and alternative measures. The procedures of data analysis were performed according with the Discursive Textual Analysis. The research reveals less theoretical production by social assistants about penalties and alternative measures in Brazil although such professionals are their privileged executors. The Judiciary Body appears as the main institutional space for the execution of penal substitutes while the analyzed studies are mainly constituted of experiences reports and investigations performed in the ambit of the professional education. The analysis of the collected information revealed the existence of different trends in the work of the social assistant upon the execution of penalties and alternative measures. Social assistants identify the prison as the lócus of punishment, violation of rights and of social control. Before the “horrors” of the prison, within a few of the analyzed studies, the professionals tend to take a complacent glance at the penalties and alternative measures and do not consider the punitive dimension and the restriction of rights that constitute them. Other noted trend regards the identification of the execution of penal substitutes as a space of materialization of the Professional Political and Ethical Project, although without the mediations needed to the comprehension of the ideological and political dimension of the penal system and of the implications of the work of such occupation in this field. The revelation that different theoretical and political perspectives exist in the Social Service also identifies the trend to a critical position regarding the work of this occupation in the penalties and alternative measures. The conclusion drawn is that when social assistants perform their work in the execution of penalties and alternative measures, they get far and near of a critical reading moving themselves within the tension between the exercise of the social control and the perspective that aims at the materialization of the Professional Political and Ethical Project.