ABSTRACT
The introduction outlines this book’s key research question, which asks what form of government does penal control produce when it is based on the freedom of offenders? In other words, how can we understand this paradoxical endeavour to control delinquent behaviour while at the same time promoting responsibility and autonomy?
Rather than addressing this paradox in philosophical or conceptual terms, this book takes a sociological perspective on the issue. It examines penal policies in their broader social and historical context and considers how they are implemented in the everyday professional practices of agents on the ground.
The book focuses on ‘Assisted Freedom’ (Liberdade Assistida) in Brazil. This form of probation is the ‘socio-educational measure’ (medida socioeducativo) most frequently applied in the country’s juvenile justice system. The Brazilian context offers a particularly salient case through which to examine the tensions at play between logics of punishment and protection and between the penal and the welfare state.
Based on a multi-sited ethnographic study in two large cities (Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte), this book offers a detailed analysis of the specific modes of regulation at work in non-custodial settings. The different tools, rationales, and procedures used to govern these youths through freedom are therefore central to this book.
