Places, subjects and Narratives: Reflections on the institutional experience of an inmate in the Roberto de Medeiros Hospital for Detention and Psychiatric Care

Abstract

In this article I aim to recap the institutional experience of one of the inmates at the Roberto de Medeiros Hospital for Detention and Psychiatric Care, which is part of the Brazilian Criminal Justice System, within the Criminal Justice System. By using the participant observation method, I monitor the role of the Public Defense Service for inmates legal assistance in that unit. The offered legal assistance is carried out together with a multidisciplinary team in charge of the cases (psychologists, social workers), as well as making use of the dynamics of events linked to the so-called Mental Health Network, which consists on alternative forms of conflict management that focus on “deinstitutionalization strategies”. From the procedures and discourses used by the Public Defense Service before the Network, I look into how they work on the reorientation of these experiences, focusing on the recomposition of life stories in the context of a transition from incarceration to the public health policies filtering. For the reflections that I present in this work, I also made use of sources such as the analysis of documents (psychiatric reports, opinions of the Public Prosecution Service) that are part of the criminal proceedings towards the accused individuals. From these observations, I try to understand how these and other experiences of people with mental disorder in conflict with the law are delineated within the Criminal System. Thus, I am interested in correlate the dynamics of conflict management and the classification of legal facts that are produced from the interactions between the legal and health actors. These actors, who play different roles within the institutional bureaucracy, produce narratives about madness, crime and care that resound on the experiences of these subjects on the interface between Criminal Justice and Mental Health System.