ABSTRACT
The Center for Resocialization of Minors (C.R.M.) is an all-male juvenile detention facility in one of the smallest states of northeastern Brazil. From the highway connecting the local airport to the city center, the facility looks innocuous—it could pass for a clinic, an accounting firm, or a real estate office. At the C.R.M., relationships between prisoners and the staff members charged with their reformation and evaluation were mediated by the information contained in case files. Most of the men and women hired to “accompany the progress” of C.R.M. inmates rarely made face-to-face contact with the teens. Stepping inside the yard of C.R.M. is a bit like visiting the island in Lord of the Flies. The boys are in a constant struggle for power and they fight according to their own rules; dominant society’s normative expectations and regulations do not govern conduct within the institution—unless someone squeals, thereby inviting adult authority to assume control in a particular situation.
