Abstract
This article analyses the guarantee of civil rights and the prevention against physical abuse for young offenders during custodial sentences. The analytical framework of this discussion considers the guarantee of rights for these young persons as an issue of citizenship, which constitution in Brazil is characterized by contradictory processes that are here defined in the concept of disjunctive citizenship and in the notion of unbounded body. The data presented in this article refers to a qualitative research in the dossiers of young offenders who had been sentenced to incarceration in one of the juvenile detention centers of Febem/São Paulo, from 1990 until 2006. And the results demonstrate how the situations of physical violence registered in the dossiers (including unofficial corporal punishments)reveal important changes and permanencies that can be understood as part of the contradictory processes of violation and expansion of the civil rights of young offenders.
Key words:
Citizenship; Civil rights; Physical abuse; Young offenders; Custodial sentence