Diversidade, êxitos e problemas: uma análise psicossocial da Prestação de Serviços à Comunidade na CEPEMA da Justiça Federal de 1º Grau em São Paulo

Abstract

This Master’s degree dissertation was to understand the particularities of practices related to Community Service Sentence / Order within the scope of the Social Work and Psychology Section of CEPEMA, at Federal Judiciary in São Paulo, based on the constructionist perspective’s assumptions, on the concepts of complexity, multiple realities and ontological politics as well as the notion of performativity. To reach its general purpose we historicized it in the world and in Brazil; we compare the English model, due to the seniority and frequent studies on the subject, to the Brazilian model, whose studies are still incipient; we described the Section’s service and characterized its diversity from initial and exit interviews. Document search and the PsycINFO database search were the procedures used to achieve the first three specific objectives and the choice and analysis of interview reports for the latter. Through this trajectory, we have identified that, at Federal Judiciary, in São Paulo, there are different ways to operationalize Community Service, from the places and practices that perform or enact it. In federal courts, where judgments and agreements are made, it is performed in its juridical aspect, as an alternative penalty or measure to prison; in the criminal execution proceedings, during a hearing, when a judge begins the execution of the sentence, Community Sentence, although performed in its legal aspect, has its focus shifted to the admonition and possible adjustment of the sentence imposed to the current conditions of the convicted person; in the Section, during the interviews, it is performed in its psychosocial aspect and in the agreed institutions it can be performed in different versions, according to three of the four conceptual models that guide the discourses of its applicability: rehabilitation of the person, a sense of revenge and the unfolding of the contemporary change from Nation-State to Market-State. The visibility we seek to give to Section’s Community Service practices lies in the need to problematize and denaturalize situations experienced by interviewees, which are often not considered, nor in the context of judgment and attribution of sentences, nor in the scope of criminal execution, since its reality produced during the admonition hearing, based on the logic of Criminal Law, is not the same as that produced in the Section during the initial interview, based on the logics of Social Service and Psychology. In the first, the legal order is privileged, since it contains the element of coercion, supported by the use of force. In this sense, the legal reality about Community Service naturally overlaps the psychosocial reality, hiding and smothering what could minimize or make it unfeasible. That is why we need to make explicit ethical and political positions regarding these realities, opening the way for dialogue about such delicate human issues we deal with on a daily basis, which at some point must be considered