Infância, punição e cidadania negada: uma análise histórica da instituição correcional FEBEM de 1902 - 1999

Abstract

This study analyzes the historical trajectory of the Fundação Estadual para o Bem-Estar do Menor (FEBEM-SP), examining its institutional practices and its role in the criminalization of poor and Black youth in Brazil. Inspired by authors such as Michel Foucault, Kátia Cibelle Machado Pirotta, Fernanda Broggi, Liana de Paula and Teresa Pires do Rio Caldeira, the research approaches FEBEM as a disciplinary apparatus marked by violence, repression, and failures in its resocialization proposal. The study highlights how the institution, since its creation under FUNABEM, consolidated itself as a system of juvenile incarceration that reinforced social stigmas and racialized exclusion from citizenship. It also explores the impact of the rebellions of the 1990s, which revealed the resistance of the inmates against inhumane conditions of overcrowding, torture, and rights violations, even after the enactment of the Statute of the Child and Adolescent (ECA).