De criança normal a menino da boca: trajetórias, resistências e perspectivas de jovens do tráfico de drogas

Abstract

This research is dedicated to analyzing the life trajectories of young people involved in the illegal drug trade, seeking to verify the meanings attributed by them to this activity. Making use of the adopted theoretical perspectives, Critical Social Psychology and Critical Criminology, we intend to elaborate an analysis capable of elucidating the contradictions placed by the context in which these young people are inserted, trying to answer if, in some measure, the insertion in the drug traffic can be configured as a strategy of resistance and confrontation to the scenario of poverty in which these young people are immersed. To this end, at first we present some of the expressions of the penal state, highlighting the permanent punitive process of penal selectivity and its impacts on young people involved in drug trafficking. Next, the approximations between the history of drugs and the adoption of the prohibitionist paradigm in the country are analysed as a process that reveals the constitution of the narcotraffic. as well as the connections established between the discourse of the "War on Drugs" and its implications for society, as a result of the criminalisation of substances. Furthermore, it portrays the mechanisms of constitution and functioning of narcotraffic, as well as the manner in which the insertion of young people into the retail drug market generally occurs, withou neglecting to debate the context in which these young people are immersed. To this end, it was guided by qualitative research, initially immersed in the field from participant observation, seeking approximation with the research subjects and, whenever necessary, making use of the field diary. As a central strategy of research, narrative interviews were used, based on the Life History method, seeking the understanding of certain elements and developments on the life trajectory of the interviewees in relation to drug trafficking. The interviews were carried out in the Juiz de Fora/MG juvenile detention centre with nine young people between fifteen and eighteen years of age who had been involved in drug trafficking. It was verified that, from the earliest age, these young people have their life trajectories marked by different expressions of violence. Furthermore, drug trafficking presents itself frequently and increasingly earlier, as an alternative to the context of precariousness of rights and public policies aimed at this portion of the population. It was also perceived that the activities in the retail drug trade reveal themselves as a way for these young people, contradictorily, to dream and seek an autonomous way of life, free from the ills of reality that crosses them.