The punitive state: The making of juvenile delinquents in Portugal

Abstract

In what appears to be the staging of a Foucauldian drama on crime and punishment, the police, judiciary and penal system in Portugal work, albeit unintentionally, hand in hand in the production of juvenile delinquents. Young sub-citizens from the socioeconomic periphery are penalized as much for their state of marginality as for their deeds, transforming petty crooks into habitual offenders, doomed to spend their youth behind bars. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in criminal courts and prisons in the Lisbon metropolitan area, the article discusses the role of law enforcement, the judiciary and prisons in the forging of criminal identities. It is argued that Portugal's punitive approach to criminal justice, despite its low crime rates, is rooted primarily in the history of its institutions and the criminologies of their agents, preserving class boundaries in a persistently unequal society.