It’s wrong, but that’s the way it is. Youth, violence and justice in north-eastern Brazil

Abstract

This article discusses the vertiginous proliferation of violence suffered and perpetrated by juveniles in the state of Bahia, north-eastern Brazil. Based on documentary and ethnographic evidence, it anatomizes the workings of law enforcement, juvenile justice and juvenile custody. It argues that the strategies of the police, the criminologies put into practice by the judiciary and the functioning of Youth Detention Centres collaborate to foster, rather than curb, youth offending and the violence committed by and against young citizens. Whereas prosecution and the dispensation of justice emphasize juvenile offenders’ responsibility for their ‘decision’ to become a ‘bandit’, juvenile custody, as a result of deep-rooted clientelist practices, is dominated by precarious conditions of incarceration which promote internal violence and the (self)ascription of a deviant juvenile identity. At the same time, the Othering of large sections of youth from the urban periphery has fuelled a vicious cycle of violence and counter-violence between members of drug factions and police forces, resulting in an increasing illegibility of the state at its margins.