ABSTRACT
Every three months, the professionals in the Liberdade Assistida measure are required to send reports to the court describing the youths’ situations and progress towards rehabilitation. At the end of the document, the professionals recommend either ending or continuing the measure. Analysis of the social uses of these documents, from their production to their reception, reveals the ways in which two different state institutions – social services and the juvenile court – work together. Two contradictory aims can be seen in the writing of these reports, as the professionals attempt both to protect youths from the justice system and to prove their effectiveness to the judge.
This chapter underlines the fact that the imbalance of power between these two parties, in favour of the juvenile courts, is then compensated by the substantial discretionary powers enjoyed by the professionals in the field, with their typical ‘welfare’ ethos. This results in a form of colonization of judicial logic by welfare logic, as court decisions are based on the categories used by these professionals. On the other hand, their autonomy is restricted by the fact that the courts increasingly require them to meet ‘new management’ standards, demanding ‘measurable and objective’ results and seeking to accelerate and formalize judicial processes.
The chapter concludes with a comparative analysis of the two cities studied, which sheds light on differences in the balance of power between the judiciary and social services according to local configurations.
