Colonial legacies and marginalization: children deprived of liberty in Brazil's socio-educational system

Abstract

This thesis examines how colonial legacies shape the contemporary socio-economic inequalities and social hierarchies present, not only in the Brazilian society as a whole, but in the penal selectivity concerning children deprived of liberty in Brazil's socio-educational system. The study argues that the overrepresentation of a specific population in confinement units is not a coincidence, but an expression of a colonial logic of social control. The study uses an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that brings together decolonial thought, history and sociological analysis, particularly based on authors like Anibal Quijano and Michel Foucault. It addresses this theory through data and documentary analysis of national sources, together with interpretation of secondary academic literature in history, sociology and law, as a way to validate the argument. It traces a historical timeline from the colonial formation of the country to the contemporary legal instruments that serve as protection for children's rights in today's Brazil. The research analyses data that show the disproportionate representation of black and pardos (mixed-race) youth in the system, and how the conditions inside the facilities are marked by continuous failures of the normative framework that governs the system. Throughout an analysis of the historical formation of the country, this thesis further analyses how penal selectivity operates through multiple mechanisms that reinforce the colonial logic and reproduce racialised outcomes across the stages of the justice process. The findings contribute to the understanding that addressing the crisis of the socio-educational system requires the confrontation of the structural and historical dimensions, as not merely fixing administrative problems, and that the data analysed here shows how the colonial logic of control remains in power. Keywords: colonial legacies, socio-educational system, penal selectivity, juvenile justice, Brazil, coloniality of power, children's rights, racial discrimination.