PROCESSES OF CONSTITUTION OF THE URUGUAYAN JUVENILE CRIMINAL SYSTEM. ¿HYBRIDS PARADIGMS?

Abstract

In this paper, the analysis focuses on adolescence as a particularized space of social criminal control   through devices that have historically constituted the Uruguayan juvenile criminal system. Social criminal control practices make up a heterogeneous field composed of a multiplicity of vectors which show the ways in which people are tried and/or treated according to their departures from the prevailing criminal law in a particularly socio-historical context . They set concrete social practices in terms of damage, liability, punishment and/or penalty (Foucault, 1991). The debates have challenged conceptions about crime and criminal enclosing in the Juvenil Criminal Systems, agreeing on the necessary inclusion of a broader social level that attempt to spread the political rationalities that result in the processes criminalization with teenagers. The notions of criminal responsibility and dangerousness are key to understanding the hybridization paradigms current in the Uruguayan Juvenile Criminal System.