Medo e controle social: uma análise da instrumentalização do medo na gestão penal da miséria

Abstract

The present work aims to analyze the use of the imaginary of fear and its discourse by the institutions of power as inductive mechanism and supporter of violent practices of social control. This logic, appropriated by the penal system, is reproduced continuously until the present day, acting directly on the material and symbolic containment of the lower classes, understood as population surplus generated by the accumulation of capital, in what can be called "criminal management of misery". Within this context, the real causes of the fears and popular insecurities, mainly related to the lack of social justice, are channeled permanently by the ruling classes and directed to provide formal legitimacy to the practices of neutralization and extermination of the so-called "dangerous classes." It uses, in its methodology, sources pf bibliographical and documentary nature. At the end, it analyzes the link between the expansion of criminal policies of social control and the destruction of the “welfare state”, as well as the growing social demand for criminal repression stemming from generalized insecurity generated by economic processes and social inequality, which is why criminal law is responsible for managing social conflicts that are far beyond its ability to solve. It concludes that, since the process of criminalization is one of the most powerful mechanisms of social control and reproduction of the inequality relations of the capitalism system, criminal law would not only be inefficient but also essentially unfit as a tool for positive social transformation.