Centro de Atendimento Juvenil Especializado (CAJE) and youth in conflict with the law at Distrito Federal

an academic literature review

Abstract

This article aims to review academic literature about the Centro de Atendimento Juvenil Especializado (CAJE), a place where measures of freedom restriction were applied to children and teenagers in conflict with the law at Distrito Federal between 1973 and 2914. The research question was how the literature describes and analyzes the functions of teenage public policies. The literature review was organized according to analytic categories to the empirical material examined: archive, experience, interview/survey. The research question’s answer were organized with three categories: (i) the distance between the legal content ou public policies after the Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente and the CAJE practice, (ii) the persistence of imprisionment public policies, (iii) the lack of girls-especific public policies. Thus, the empiric based literature review shows as public policies executors comprehensions: priorization of freedom restriction, lack of integration to the community, the young people seen as non-qualified with the social rules. There would be continuation of perspective previous to the protective and actual legislation: coercion, confinement, non-qualification and non-resocialization of children and teenagers in conflict with the law.