“For us, Degase is a way of life and not of death.” The claim for rights through the victimization of socio-educational security agents

Abstract

The present article is a part of the ongoing research on the insertion process of socioeducational security agents of the General Department of Socio-Educational Actions (Degase) into the scope of public security. The initial hypothesis of this article is that the aforementioned category uses the disclosure of episodes of physical violence suffered by agents to highlight the dangerousness of their profession and, with this, gather support from the public opinion in the claim for rights concerning the categories of public security. The main objectives of this work are: to present how the socio-educational security agents equate their attributions and their respective risks to the attributions of professionals belonging to the scope of public security; to demonstrate the difficulty of inserting Degase agents into the category of victim; to point out that adolescents in conflict with the law are identified as the tormentors of the category of agents; and to interpret what is the strategy adopted by the agents, through their syndicate, to demand rights linked to public security categories. It is concluded, from the analysis of the research data, that the socio-educational security agent uses the presentation of the dangerousness of the adolescent in conflict with the law to demonstrate the risk of his profession and, consequently, to demand rights in reparation for the damages suffered.