Where fear reigns: juvenile justice system, violence and hostile emotions in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to reflect on how violence in the daily life of juvenile justice detention unit is exercised through hostile emotions. These express power relationships, which separate, hierarchize, and differentiate institutional actors from one another, being also elements that ensure humanity. To this end, we present an ethnography conducted in a male detention unit of Rio de Janeiro juvenile justice system. The analyses are made from the researcher’s white woman’s body, considered out of place there. Through her being ‘out of place’ in this institution, we will analyze the circulation of these hostile emotions in the detention space, as well as the ways of dwelling it, and also the possibilities and limitations to relate with each institutional actor, especially the young inmates and the socio-educational agents. In the ethnographic path, the forms of pervasive violence exerted in the institution through hostile affections are evident. They appear whether in the construction of an atmosphere of fear, disgust and/or contempt. These affections are experienced both in the relationships between the various subjects who transit through the internment and between them and the space of deprivation of freedom. In this way, it is revealed how such affections participate and are instruments of flow management, typical of the dynamics of confinement institutions.