Handling adolescent defendants in the courts: solution or myth?

Abstract

This study seeks to critically examine the conditions under which the state can provide for the education called for in measures and punishments issued to adolescents involved in legal conflicts. It analyzes the problems and limitations caused by reducing the search for solutions to these issues to the activity of the State, through access to the courts, the Judicial System and to administrative care agencies, as the only sources of rights and of a guarantee of rights. It points to the negative consequences of using education as a final goal of the applicable measures and punishments in the juvenile court models in vigor, both in Spain and Brazil. Based on this critical analysis, a broad debate is suggested, which involves the parts directly involved in the conflict in the construction of emancipatory alternatives based on the democratization of responses that go beyond the juridifciation of life and the judicial resolution of conflicts.