Citizenship Rights for Young Offenders: The Impacts of the 1990's Reforms on the Youth Justice System in Brazil

The youth justice system in Brazil has been through many reforms of the last two decades. This system was created in 1927 in order to separate young offenders from adults and prevent adult criminality by means of early intervention. Throughout the 20^th century, early intervention meant custody on juvenile correction centers and the youth justice system adopted a tutelary model that denied citizenship status to young offenders. It was only in the 1990’s that significant reforms were taken. Brazil ratified many of the UN documents on the rights of the child and on youth justice, resulting in the implementation of the doctrine of integrated protection in the national legislation. Henceforth, the tutelary model was supposed to be replaced by a new model that would focus on non-custodian intervention and that would recognize and guarantee the citizenship rights of young offenders. This paper will analyse the impacts of these reforms in the state of São Paulo, which has the major number of juvenile offenders in the country, in order to identify in which extent the reforms can be considered effective in the guarantee of citizenship rights and status for young offenders. The tension between the guarantee of civil and social rights and the persistence of physical violence in juvenile centers will be discussed as a key factor to understand the possible outcomes and limits of the reforms.