ABSTRACT
Non-custodial measures imply that juvenile justice institutions have to interact with the school system and the employment market on a daily basis in order to promote youths’ education and professionalization. This chapter reveals the discrepancies between the official aim of educational and professional rehabilitation and the effective range of possibilities for these youths from the most vulnerable sectors of Brazilian society. For most of them, the pursuit of their studies and access to the formal labour market are two equally unrealistic goals.
The professionals working in the Liberdade Assistida measure find themselves caught in a form of ‘organizational hypocrisy’ and forced to devise everyday strategies to mitigate some of the paradoxes inherent to their mission. In some cases, they select which information they pass on to the judge – in order to tailor the reality of the situation to the expectations of the judicial authorities – but in other cases, they delegate responsibility for the failure of rehabilitation to the youths themselves. This occurs particularly when the youths do not demonstrate the capacity to produce coherent and appropriate discourse presenting ‘valid reasons’ for their inability to stick to the path of rehabilitation. Finally, for some extremely vulnerable youths assigned to the Liberdade Assistida measure, the professionals find themselves working in a way that is closer to harm reduction than social rehabilitation. For these specific youths, committing an offence in fact results in them benefiting from state protection.
