Legal Socialization Process of Children and Early Adolescents in Sao Paulo, Brazil

The study of the process of legal socialization of children and early adolescents led to important theoretical and methodological advances over the last years; in particular to the development of the conceptual framework to study the development of trust and the process by means of which legitimacy develops throughout childhood and adolescence. “Legal socialization” encompasses the process through which the legitimacy of rules and laws, and the authorities that enforce these, may or may not affect the decision of individuals to violate or to comply with the rules. Though in the international literature there is renewed interested in the study of legal socialization. In Brazil, this subject has been somewhat ignored, constituting a gap that we seek to fill along our research. Our main objective is to present the process of development of legitimacy and trust in democratic institutions in its roots, and its impact on the behavior towards the law of early adolescents (11 years) as they move into adolescence (15 years). In other words, we intend to present how different forms of authority impact on the legal socialization process. The general assumption is: legitimacy, compliance with laws and democratic institutions in the city of Sao Paulo (investigation focus) can not be fully understood without a detailed study about how compliance with laws, rule and norms develops are internalized and expressed among children and early adolescents. Our primary research question is: how do early adolescents from different social background, living in urban areas with different characteristics, patterns of access (and violations) to rights develop an understanding of laws and authorities? As conclusion, we ensure the legal socialization process is one key issue to understand phenomenon of urban violence and crime, and also to understand the persistence of serious human rights violations even in the democratic period.