ABSTRACT
The aim of the chapter is to address the requirements for an abolitionist understanding of social rehabilitation. The topic will be approached through an analysis of the Brazilian context, where the normative call for the ideal of rehabilitation as the main 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 chapter presents guiding proposals in responding to the question of how to discuss 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 being part of the problem, and not the solution for it, thus distancing itself from correctionalism, from ideas of social defence and from any other pathological conception of individual behaviour. As such, social rehabilitation is viewed as a part of the policies that can curb the damages caused by these punitive practices and penal institutions. Lastly, recent calls to ‘defund’ the police have contributed to defending an increase in social policies and the transfer of budget resources to social and collective care programmes, thereby fostering a communal interpretation of the concept of social rehabilitation.
