Quando os médicos julgam e os juízes tratam psiquiatria e normalização no sistema penal brasileiro

Abstract

This dissertation outlines the functions performed by psychiatrists in Brazilian penal system. These are the assistance to mentally ill prisoners, the assessment of the responsibility over a criminal conduct and the performance of exams that allow common prisoners to benefit from progressive freedom or parole, accordingly to Brazilian Law. The dilemmas posed by the contact between justice and science are presented and is demonstrated how, in the two latter instances, the psychiatrist abandons his usual subject, the mental patient, and deals with a diverse one, the dangerous individual. To know and act upon this new subject, psychiatry sets up along with the judiciary a specific kind of power named, after Michel Foucault, normalization which, under a genealogical view, transcends its subject, becoming a means of controlling society as a whole. Having as main theoretical reference the works of the French thinker, notably the texts that came to light in the last few years, with the publishing of courses and many dispersed papers, this means of control over society is analyzed, being discussed how it has been transforming itself during the last decades. In addition, this work defends the extinction of the psychiatric exams to the progression of prison regime, aiming at the correction of system which has not been working appropriately since its introduction.