This study describes the moral universe of juvenile offenders in internment at the São Paulo State Fundação do Bem-Estar do Menor. Fourteen male adolescents were interviewed on the subject of 'Seguro', i.e., an organisational code created by themselves, involving a precise set of rules whose inobservance implies the exclusion of the transgressor. We aimed at investigating this code legitimacy, as well as the moral values supporting it. The categories devised for data analysis were: autonomy/heteronomy; virtues, and moral self. The data show a prominence of heteronomous forms of legitimation of rules; the valorization of certain character traits (virtues) such as strength, virility, and courage, and the sharp devaluation of their opposites: weakness, homosexuality, and fear. Our results also point out to the construction of an identity which encompasses values in the so-called "crime world", clearly opposed to those cultivated in the "mundão"- literally, big world, i.e., society -, regarding the people who are not "malandros" - a positive word for bandit, used by the respondents.
ADOLESCENTS; FEBEM; VALUES; IDENTITY