Juvenile justice. The socio-juridical perspective to think about the need for interdisciplinary interventions

Abstract

This article addresses issues related to the field of juvenile justice in relation to the disputes at stake regarding judicial and public policies, with various meanings and directionalities, that operate in relation to adolescents who have violated criminal laws. Reformist intentions are observed between the different legal positions, be they retributionist, restorative, etc., which challenge us to delve into their underlying epistemological matrices, given that the political consequences of these will affect institutional transformations and systems for the protection of the rights of children and adolescents. In Latin America, the idea of transforming the tutelary paradigm into juvenile criminal responsibility regimes has predominated. The consequences have not been the best, being possible to observe phenomena of adultization in the ways of approaching children and adolescents as well as high rates of incarceration. In this context, the orientations towards what is called restorative juvenile justice appear as a novelty for some, while for others they constitute a path that has already been traveled with conviction. There are, however, certain risks in its adoption, and one of them is to take the restorative juvenile justice as a model to apply. We do not share this position, but think, in the words of Howard Zehr, of restorative processes and continuums. Inquiring about the senses and directionalities at play in the different modes of approach adopted in juvenile justice is what is intended in this article, in order to insist on the need to carefully review their political and institutional consequences in order to ensure a differentiated approach for adolescent offenders of the criminal law. Reflecting from a socio-legal approach on interdisciplinary interventions, roles and functions in the administration of justice becomes inescapable.