DISCOURSES OF STATE AGENTS OF A CRIMINAL-SOCIAL CONTROL DEVICE FROM BUENOS AIRES PROVINCE ABOUT PENAL YOUTH RESPONSIBILITY AND THE DESIGN OF NON-CUSTODIAL INTERVENTION STRATEGIES

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze the sense produced by state agents about the socio-juridical category of penal youth responsibility, as well as the relevant institutional actions which they develop in the context of the execution of freedom non-privative measures/sanctions. That analysis is produced through a case study residing in a criminal device of social control from Buenos Aires province, between 2014 and 2016. This device elaborates intervention strategies orientated to the reflexivity and moral education towards youths of 16 and 17 years old who are judicially involved in the commitment of crimes.

In that sense, we explore: what do state agents have for penal youth responsibility? how do they design and carry out penal youth responsibility strategies directed towards youths? Under the basis of which logical do they operate? How do they configure their identity? And, finally, which is the specificity of freedom non-privative measures/sanctions? Do they contribute to avoid sending young people to institutions of confinement?

In order to answer these interrogations, we employ a cultural perspective of the criminal question, and we resort non-participant observation techniques and in-depth, semi-structured interviews to the agents of the Centre of Reference. Some results of the study allow us to affirm that, in the framework of the intervention of non-custodial intervetion, the socio-juridical category of penal youth responsibility is constructed, intermittently, in a reintegrative way and in a stigmatizing way from discourses of different levels of morality that operate on the basis of intervention strategies of “subjective responsibility”.