Os miseráveis capitães da areia e do asfalto: etiqueta, desvio e norma o menor infrator no discurso social e parlamentar

Abstract

The dissertation aims at proving the hypothesis set forth by the labelling approach theory, that deviation is not natural nor ontological, but an interpretation, a socially constructed meaning selectively opposed to some, which can be observed in the labelling of the juvenile offender, core subject of the dissertation. Thereby, the creation of the labelling stereotype of the juvenile offender is investigated, which would emerge as a great other of current times, a fearsome figure to which the benefits of alterity should not be extended, but all the force of the law. In order for criminal law to be able to reach the juvenile offender, the legal age of unaccountability must be revised, giving birth to the discourse of reduction of age for criminal accountability, which is constitutionally set. Therefore, the social representation of the juvenile offender gives cause to the discourse of expansion of criminal law, an advancing the punitive limits so that they can reach and segregate the juvenile offender from society. It is assumed that the labelling process is eminently linguistic, it is the acquisition of names and meanings that gravitate around labels, true significant metonymies, which take the subject as a part of what he is, or as a part of that which is attributed to him, given that that labelees are not always the true offender of the given order. Thus, the analysis of the construction of the juvenile offender label involves the historical construction of the image of this deviator, proceeds with the treatment dispensed by the Law to children and teenagers through history, until it reaches the semiotic formation of the label. The juvenile offender is faced as a symbol which has dislodged its first meanings to allocate a new selective meaning oriented at a different type of juveniles. The symbol in case traverses the medias discourse, which reiterates the stigmatizing selection, reinforcing the meaning of the expression. All matter of incomprehensions regarding juvenile delinquency is allocated to the simple expression juvenile offender, and contaminates not only the public opinion, mas also legislative production, whose rationality is set aside in favor of the pursuit of this other. The deviation circle is complete with the legislative reaction to teenage criminality which, in its turn, gives cause to speeches in the media which feed on, and are fed to, social representations of the matter, which offer support to legislative propositions, in an infinite feedback circle of labelling in the webs of language. In this scenario, literature allows for the rebuilding of lost alterity in favor of the juvenile offender.