Serviço Social e sistema penal: reflexões acerca do trabalho profissional na gestão e planejamento em face do Projeto Ético-Político Crítico

Abstract

The present study had as object analyze the professional actions of managing social workers working in the Social Service Coordination at the State Secretariat of Penitentiary Administration of Rio de Janeiro (SEAP), considering the Social Service Critical Ethical-Political Project. The objective was to investigate the possibility of the Project's guidelines guiding the direction of the work, which is part of the actions carried out by social workers in the institution, located within the so-called socio-legal sphere, which deals with the custody of people deprived of liberty as a result of committing acts classified as crimes. It is a socio-occupational space focused on social control and discipline, with characteristics that potentially violate rights, representing extra challenges for the materialization of the critical direction of the Professional Project. This direction can be found in different spaces where social workers work. However, the professional work conducted in institutions stands out, given the interventionist nature of the profession, and for bringing together a large portion of the professional category, denoting the relevance of research in these locations, with a view to materializing the guidelines of the Critical Professional Project. The research territory, located in Rio de Janeiro, has the third largest prison population in Brazil, whose reality can be taken as a parameter of what occurs in the other states of the country, as the expressions of the “social issue” that permeate professional work have a macro societal perspective, despite regional differences. The study was guided by Critical Social Theory, whose adopted reference was the Marxist tradition, which understands social reality as essentially contradictory, from a perspective of totality and historicity, making it possible to uncover social phenomena beyond apparent reality. As a methodological procedure for data collection, interviews were conducted with the managing social workers working at the institution. We also use our experience of more than two decades as a social worker at SEAP. Analysis of the data captured considering the adopted theory revealed the difficulties in the Critical Project guiding the actions of social worker managers, with emphasis on the precarious working conditions that exist in the institution under analysis.