Selectivity analyses wp3 António Pedro Dores, 30 May 2008 CRCC meeting, Ankara

What is our goal? To present national results of social selectivity on criminalization To access the knowldge of social services professionals on cost evaluation of crime repression Perception of profissionals about the efficiency of judicial and penal activities Special focus on drug war situation

Table of issues The Portuguese situation Known social targets for penal selectivity Theoretical and methodological decisions on social research

The Portuguese situation Strutural problems on education, justice and modern social movements ( and economics ) Low crime rate, low immigration rate, low political controversy High social inequality High number of prison inmates, low prestige of justice decisions, weak social movements claiming justice fairness

The Portuguese situation (II) High level political ( conspirative ) conflicts about justice system ( to promote economic fairness perserving practical imunity to social high rank people. Look at corruption discussions ) Few studies on law or prisons. Justice statistics availabel only very recently. Administrative censorship constraints on justice and prison workers Easy preventive imprisonment (automatic for foreigners)

Known tragets for selectivity Gipsys, black people and foreigners – Africans, Brazilians and eastern Europeans No educated and poor people People living “problematic neighborhoods” Impunity for VIP and corruption

Methodological ambiance Government decline to colaborate Dificult to achieve authorization to reach ressocialization professionals on job One can recrute two researchers assistents who knows well Portuguese prison system

Some theoretical findings Emerging links between social networks inside prison and social networks in popular neighborhoods Mixage media/police programs producing and exploring insecurity fellings Hipothesys: penal selectivity main variable is territory! Question: producing, labeling and stigmatizing neighborhoods: calculating costs

Critical approach Repression of crime is not only (or even mostly) penal procedings Corruption in planing building sector is crime and produces crime Metropolis are explored by popular media/police coalision (as in 19th century) Politics uses metropolis segmentation to help competitive concentrations of capital

Critical approach (II) Speculative evaluation of territory looking at finantial exploitation excludes non competitive people It acumulate segregate neighborhoods, under the rank of expected solvability Competitive (and sick) voyeurism mixes with security purposes of surveillance

Applied methodology Comparing two cases on two diferent towns ( one more than 30 years old neighborhood of paisant Portuguese immigrants into Lisbon; one few years old black neighborhood lodged at Amadora ) Look at the ways this neighborhoods has been produced and labeled Interviews with professionals of all social areas who works there ( political, educational, police, social security, religious, local planning professionals )

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