The Institutionalization of Social Work in Penal Agencies and Its Paradoxes (1940–1950)

Abstract

This study investigates the process of institutionalization of Social Work in penal agencies in Rio de Janeiro. While conservative thought considers the entry of Social Work into penal agencies as an expression of modernization in penitentiary matters, this paper offers a critical analysis that highlights both continuities and ruptures in relation to the protoforms of the profession. Based on documentary research, including newspapers from the period (1940–1950) and Revista A Estrela, the journal of the Central Penitentiary of the Federal District, the analysis reveals that the process of institutionalizing the profession in penal agencies breaks with protoforms and their dispersed charitable assistance forms, as well as with attempts to cooperate with welfare institutions, referred to by conservative thought of U.S. origin as "Social Work Agencies" or primary organizations. However, contradictory continuity remains, as the validity of professional work in penal agencies differs little from the protoforms and their ability to manipulate empirical variables to materially and spiritually situate the subject in the daily process of secondary criminalization, despite two fundamental differences: the commodification of labor and the adoption of an explicitly "scientific" discourse.