Juvenile Criminal System and Community: a (non)planned relationship: Juvenile Criminal System and Community: a (non)planned relationship

Abstract

The international, national and local normatives that regulate the rights of children, adolescents and young people determine that in cases of criminal prosecution, the deprivation of liberty should be the last ratio (last resort). Therefore, alternative measures to prison become relevant, particularly those that are carried out "in territory" and that require the active participation of the "community" in the process of criminal responsibility of the young person. In this article we propose to reveal the ways in which the community is understood and its participation in this process, through analyzing regulations and intervention protocols. From a socio-anthropological approach we will analyze the ways in which these measures are deployed in a town in the suburbs of Buenos Aires in order to describe the "participation of the community" in the practice, recovering the experiences and voices of the actors through participant observations and interviews. In the case study we will conclude, that the institutions and actors of the "community" are unaware of the regulations that state their role in juvenile criminal proceedings, as well as the difficulties and potentialities of the relationship between the "community" and the Juvenile Penal System in a neoliberal context.