their actions, or accept certain norms and values); finally, speech is also one of the aims of the process itself: the degree to which the youths have been ‘respon-sibilized’ is assessed in light of the things they say (about their offence, their life goals, and so on).
This chapter identifies the purpose of the técnicas’ words – what they are try-ing to change in the young offenders – and examines the modes of constraint deployed by this government through speech. While state power is clearly more visible, violent, and authoritarian in custodial facilities, this does not mean that the more subtle and intangible modes of constraint specific to the non-custodial environment lack effectiveness. By analyzing the tools, aims, and modes of con-straint involved in governing through speech in LA, my aim is also to identify the kind of individual that the institution seeks to produce and, more broadly, the conceptions of the norm and of social integration that underpin these models of action.
Finally, although this government through speech operates within an asym-metrical power relation between state employees and young offenders, I do not only look at its constraining effects of domination but also examine its more empowering aspects. As Demailly (2008) suggests, social work is based on listening to others and combines types of domination and types of emancipa-tion of the subject. While being forced to put one’s private thoughts and self-identity into words can, in some contexts, take the form of a violent intrusion, in others, speaking out can be a ‘technology of the self ’2 (Foucault 1988) – a source of subjectivation that allows a new relation to self to emerge.
This chapter comprises three sections. The first describes the various ways in which the técnicas use speech to transform and normalize the behaviour and subjectivities of the youths they deal with. The second section then focuses on the modes of constraint produced by this form of government. The third and final section builds on these analyses to identify the three ideal-typical models underpinning the verbal interactions that take place between youths and técni-cas: model 1 seeks to produce reflexive individuals, capable of generating mean-ing on their own; model 2, based on the idea of a contract, perceives individuals as rational and seeks to encourage cost-benefit analysis; model 3 emphasizes the shaping of moral individuals by instilling behavioural norms and fostering a sense of guilt. The chapter concludes by demonstrating how these models con-verge in making the young offenders take responsibility for their actions and lives but also how all three models combine and overlap in the técnicas’ daily work.
Speech as a normalizing tool
Eliciting reflection and reconstructing meaning
The técnicas establish a dialogue with the youths in order to try to transform their subjectivities. During the atendimentos, they use the words they believe will be most likely to influence the youths’ perceptions of events, in order to foster
reflection (about their actions, about their lives) and so lead them to modify their behaviour accordingly. Although the ultimate aim is this objective shift in behaviour, it is supposed to result from a change that first takes place at a subjective level. Underpinning this use of speech is a theory about the impact of words which is inspired by psychoanalysis, a field of knowledge with wide-spread influence in social and health-care policies in Brazil (Jesuino-Ferretto 2007; Braunstein 2008). As we have seen, in Belo Horizonte, psychoanalysis is the official ideological foundation for the LA system. The words that the youths use to tell their stories or simply to talk about their daily lives are considered to be very telling about their relationship to the world; similarly, within these verbal interactions, the técnicas choose words designed to have an impact on the youths, whose capacity for reflexive thinking is then supposed progressively to transform that relationship to the world. Questioning, criticism, and reflexivity are key notions in this conception of speech as a catalyst for change. The aim is to bring the youths to question the meaning they formerly gave to their delin-quent practices but also to their family relationships, school, and the profes-sional world. This transformation is not supposed to happen because someone else has imposed the ‘correct’ or ‘normal’ conception of the world upon them from outside; rather, it has to proceed from the youths themselves, through a reflexive and dialogical process in which they produce their own new and singular vision of the world around them. This approach is clearly designed to move away from social policies considered ‘paternalistic’ and instead to place individual subjects at the heart of the process of transformation. This can be a long-term process, which is why patience is of the essence when faced with teenagers who do not immediately demonstrate the necessary reflexive capaci-ties, as the following excerpt from a report sent to the judge illustrates:
This adolescent can’t manage to adopt a critical perspective on the choices he makes, but we still believe that the measure can have effects on this adolescent’s life.
(Antonio’s file) The focus on potential future progress means that the técnicas listen to the youths without imposing restrictions, whatever the topics they choose to broach. Carolina (Psych., BH), for example, listened to Alex complaining about the presence of his aunt, a crack user, in the family home; Alex found it unac-ceptable that he had to hide his belongings for fear that his aunt would sell them to buy drugs and couldn’t understand why his mother accepted this extra burden when she already had many mouths to feed. Most of the atendimento revolved around these issues, and Alex made almost no reference to the profes-sional training programme he had just attended. Although, in Carolina’s eyes, Alex’s aunt’s addiction was not a key issue, or even relevant, when it came to his progress in LA, her willingness to listen is perfectly compatible with the técnicas’
conception of how to relate to their charges. In another example, Cristiane
(SW, BH) spent several atendimentos talking to one boy about his jealousy with regard to his girlfriend, as well as discussing various coping mechanisms to deal with this. She took the opportunity to suggest that he go to a family planning clinic to find out more about relationship issues (which he refused to do). These two examples show that the atendimentos in the LA measure can constitute spaces of dialogue for topics that are sometimes far removed from the causes and modalities of delinquency or its possible ‘remedies.’
However, listening attentively in this way is not as aimless as it might seem.
The objective is to encourage the youths to think in new ways, to deconstruct what previously seemed normal or unproblematic to them – in short to foster reflexivity. Thus, when Alex told Carolina (Psych., BH) that he loved buying brand-name clothes and shoes and that he always spent the money he earned, she spoke to him about the risk of incurring debt and the need to ‘spend according to one’s income.’ Carolina’s intervention resembles in many ways the classic endeavour, in social work, to normalize the working classes’ relationship to saving money. However, the relatively horizontal form taken by the dialogue allowed the young man to go on to explain that, when he did have savings, he would be forced to make loans to friends or neighbours in financial difficulty, which would never subsequently be returned:
And then he started to say something really interesting, that for him saving money wasn’t a good thing, because when he saves money, there’s always someone who comes and asks him to lend them some. He said, for exam-ple, that a neighbour comes and says ‘Oh Alex, there’s no gas left at home to cook’ and he feels bad so he lends some [money].
(Carolina, Psych., BH, about Alex) In order to avoid this sort of situation, Alex had therefore decided to spend the money he earned immediately on the consumer goods of his choice:
So he said this to me: ‘You know what, I prefer spending on myself . . . because if I keep my money, someone asks me for some. . ., I lend it and the person doesn’t give it back to me and so I’m spending it on them . . . so, there you go, my money, I’m going to spend it all on myself, I’m going to buy things for me, I want nice things.’
(Carolina, Psych., BH, about Alex) By giving Alex the chance to explain his spending, Carolina’s support focused on meaning-making and his reflexivity rather than on inducing him mechani-cally to internalize a behavioural norm. As we have seen, this approach can apply to specific social norms (related to money, to relationships), but it can also aim to foster more general reflection about concepts such as citizenship or the rule of law. Amelia (Psych., RJ), for example, took the opportunity presented by one young man’s concerns about approaching the age of 18 (he was worried
about encountering problems with the adult justice system, which is far more repressive than juvenile justice in Brazil) to encourage him to rethink his free-doms and duties as an adult:
We live in a society, under the rule of law; if you’re wearing nice trainers, would you like it if someone came up to you and said ‘You’ve lost, I like them too.’3 And he said: ‘No, of course not.’ Well yes, no one wants that. The state protects you too, you think it only protects the lady with her mobile phone? It protects you too, otherwise I could take your trainers! And then they just sit there, like . . . I think it gives them an opportunity to think.
(Amelia, Psych., RJ) While the dialogue established here by the técnica clearly aimed to get the youth to ‘play’ the citizenship ‘game’ by drawing on arguments about equality before the law, she was not under any illusions about the vast inequalities in access to consumer goods in Brazil that motivate some youths to commit offences. For this reason, she stated that she also encourages youths, in atendimentos, to think about the ‘world of crime’ in which it is possible to earn in a day what legal workers earn in a month. Once again, the aim here is not to censure or condemn out of hand the youths’ involvement in criminal activities but instead to encourage them to think reflexively, making sense of these practices and their consequences, in the hope that this new reflexivity might prompt them to change direction.
The topics broached in these discussions all aim to stimulate the youths’
reflexive thinking, but they also depend upon the interpretive frame the técnica applies to the offence (as described in Chapter 3). Amelia’s words in the pre-ceding quote, for example, relate to an interpretive frame focusing on ‘crime as a way of life.’ However, when the técnicas view the offence as a ‘symptom’
of problematic family circumstances, they will try instead to get the youths to question their representations of their family relationships. Carolina (Psych., BH) worked in this sense with Emerson, for example, in his atendimentos. In her view, he was the victim of ill-treatment by his adoptive parents, and it was therefore necessary for him to stop finding excuses for their behaviour and to realize that he did not deserve to be treated that way. Emerson’s parents began preventing their son from attending his atendimentos, whereas he was always happy to come, which seemed to confirm that Carolina’s approach had had the desired effect. According to her, Emerson’s parents began to boycott the LA measure when they realized their son had started to take a critical view of his family environment.
In Belo Horizonte,4 the técnicas employ several internal categories that reflect their professional knowledge and experience of how best to transform young offenders’ subjectivities. They use the term gancho (hook, as in a fish hook) to refer to something that will allow them to ‘reel the youths in’ – something offered up by the youths themselves and providing a foundation on which to build their work; they employ the verb vacilar (to sway, to falter) to refer to
the way in which they would like the youths to question things, as a catalyst for change; and they use the term revivavolta (an about-turn, an upheaval) to describe the total identity conversion that is the técnicas’ ultimate objective.
The ganchos or ‘hooks’ are aspects of the youths’ lives which, when broached by the técnicas during the atendimentos, have an ‘impact.’ This impact then becomes the starting point for a series of reflections by the youths, which lead to a change in attitude and ‘stance.’ The técnicas use the gancho deliberately as part of a strategy to destabilize the youths and challenge their habitual representa-tions of themselves and of the world. When youths begin their LA measure, the técnicas do not yet know how they will ‘reel’ them in, what ‘hook’ will work in each specific case. They therefore try different things and observe the reactions as the atendimentos unfold, until they have identified the gancho that proves fruit-ful. While the técnicas do not begin with any absolute certainty that their ganchos will be effective, they do not chose them at random either: ganchos are selected according to certain explanatory schemes about individuals, based in particular on psychoanalytical theory. For example, Carolina reminded Rodrigo of his new role as a father and tried to spark a reaction from him by mentioning his relationship to his own father, also a drug dealer: ‘Is that what you want for your son, what do you think your son needs, do you think he needs a dealer for a father, a criminal for a father, is that what you want? . . . What father would you have wanted? You tell me your father was a dealer too, that he shot people, that your father killed lots of people. . .’ (Carolina, Psych., BH about Rodrigo). Her intention here was to bring Rodrigo’s different roles and social identities into perspective and to make his identity as a drug trafficker progressively less central and fundamental than his identity as a father or a boyfriend. Carolina’s scope of action nevertheless remained extremely limited: she could only talk with Rodrigo once a week. The extent to which he identified with the drug world, reinforced by his recent promotion to the status of ‘boss,’ ultimately determined his decision to continue dealing.
In other cases, the ganchos eventually make the youths ‘sway’ (vacilar) suf-ficiently to turn their backs on their criminal activities. They can also be prompted to come to this realization by something outside the atendimentos. In Fabiano’s case, this occurred when, on his técnica’s advice, he went to obtain his national identity card. At the age of 15, his only official paperwork was his birth certificate (unusually in Brazil, where someone of his age would typically have other documents). His técnica convinced him to enter the system officially, as this would allow him to find work on the formal job market:
It made him think, he said: ‘now I have an identity, I can’t be just anyone anymore, I can’t do just anything anymore, they’ve taken my fingerprints.’
It had an impact on him, something that told him that he was now Fabi-ano, that he was marked, identified as a citizen, right, that now he has an identity, he can no longer be just anyone.
(Sofia, Psych., BH, about Fabiano)
While the trigger event here was the obtaining of an identity card (rather than speech), the técnica’s narrative once again highlights the central role played by
‘verbalization,’ as this is what gave substance to Fabiano’s realization. It is also worth noting the discrepancy between the técnica’s interpretation of the event, understood in terms of civic inclusion, and Fabiano’s perspective, more focused on the possibility of being controlled.
Making a pact
A second use of speech emerges from the interactions between the youths and their técnicas. In this case, the aim is not to transform subjectivities through reflexivity but rather to make a pact with the young offenders. The pact in question generally focuses on getting them to agree to make an effort at school, to enter professional life, or to complete certain administrative procedures, as illustrated by the following handwritten notes made by Patricia (SW, RJ) after an atendimento with Artur:
Artur came with his uncle. He’s not enrolled at school, but his uncle said he is going to do it. Artur is doing an IT course in Copacabana, which costs 139 reals, on Saturdays from 1.40 p.m. to 4 p.m. He’s learning to use Windows. I asked him about the course and he said he wasn’t very moti-vated because it was fee-paying (!). We offered to sign him up for selection for the Young Apprentice programme at the Post Office and Artur seemed interested. For this reason, we made the following pact:
1) Look up the application process on the Post Office website today 2) Tomorrow: speak on the phone to fix an appointment to prepare for
the application process
3) Send the documents to the national employment service (his uncle said he would deal with this today)
The aim of this contractual use of speech is, first and foremost, to work on changing the youth’s objective circumstances rather than his subjectivity. Dur-ing the atendimento, the técnica questioned him about his current situation, what he wanted to do, and what his plans were, while also informing him about existing possibilities, particularly in terms of entering the job market. It was not so much about ‘bringing out’ his ‘desire’ to do something as it was about offering him different options within the framework determined by public policy (focusing on school, professional pathways, and reinforcing family ties).
While the relationship between the youths and their técnicas remains relatively horizontal in this context, because it is based on the idea of a contract between two parties, norms nevertheless play a bigger role here: they are defined from the outset by the institution rather than being devised by the youths through reflexive thinking. This use of speech is more frequent, or at least presents in a more ideal-typical fashion, in Rio de Janeiro given the central role played by
social workers in implementing the LA policy there. Using contractual tech-niques is also strongly encouraged both by juvenile courts and the most recent legislative reforms,5 which require técnicas to produce an ‘individual assistance plan’ signed by the técnica, the youth, and the youth’s parents. This plan has to include the different objectives the youth is supposed to achieve while in the measure, which all parties agree to respect by signing the document.
In order to determine the terms of these pacts, the técnicas must first of all arrive at their diagnosis of the youths’ situations and their needs and options.
This diagnosis takes an objective, bureaucratic form: in the course of the first
This diagnosis takes an objective, bureaucratic form: in the course of the first