Pathologization of the youngster author of infractional act and the emergence of "new" judicial asylums

Abstract

This study focuses the growing evidence of cases of psychiatric solution directed to perpetrators of lawbreakers, especially in the state of São Paulo, which culminate in the construction of an Experimental Health Unit, a joint venture between the Departments of Health, Justice and Corrections, in order to provide care to infraction authors with diagnosis of personality disorder and/or dangerous for the fulfillment of socio-educational measures for admission to the restraint. Some of the force lines which are originated from this construction are examined, in particular the renewed use of the notion of danger that takes on overtones that make easy the extension and the the spread of its use, increasingly subject to demands for "social protection". This study highlights how the composition of the infraction with mental disorder buildes arguments for changes to the Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA) and for the production of practices directed to the author of offenses that are diametrically opposed to the paradigms of the ECA and the current national policy on mental health. Finally, the text proposes, in view of the Mental Health Reform, some possibilities for thinking and acting differently, questioning the therapeutic guidelines tied to a logic of individualism, which suggests the necessity to enhance the view and action for the complex and often restricted plot in which these young people fall socially, investing in clinical practice in its ethical dimension and not as a place of control, supervision or discipline from life.