The criminal justice system and domestic violence against children and adolescents: a sociological study

Abstract

Domestic violence again children and adolescents currently constitutes an important issue for discussion by social movements and civil society. Recognized in recent decades as a social problem in Brazil, it is one of the components of the debates about the exercise of justice in Brazil. This article seeks to discuss the existing relationship between the social conflicts involving childhood and adolescence and the judicial system through an analysis of how this problem is treated by the criminal courts in Santa Maria, a municipality of 266 thousand people, 300 kilometers from the capital of Rio Grande do Sul State. To do so, it examined how these social conflicts are handled by the formal mechanisms of social control and the procedures adopted by legal authorities in response to the legal conflicts and the types of sentences attributed to these criminal court actions. The study sought to understand the prevailing elements in the decisions, based on a characterization of the population that accesses this system.