O espaço de vida do agente de segurança penitenciária no cárcere: entre gaiolas, ratoeiras e aquários

Abstract

The aim of this research was analyzing the psychology of correctional officers as members of a professional group carrying out their duty inside the prison.The theoretical reference was Kurt Lewin's field theory, highlighting the concepts of life space, individual and environment, regions, barriers, locomotion and time.The purpose of the investigation was 27 correctional officers from two male correction facilities in Sao Paulo State.These officers were observed in three working situations, mainly in the gatehouses and in the prison cages, for 120 hours, or ten shifts.The observations, with ethnographic tone, which included actions, gestures, words and physical environment, were recorded in field notebooks.The analysis of the observations was accomplished through the reading of Lewinian concepts, helped by other studies on prisons and group relations inside the correction facilities.The systematization of the analyses helped inferring that: i) the environment of the correctional facilities is not only dangerous and unhealthy, but also fragile and meager; ii) the correctional officers, as human beings, are resentful of the inadequate working conditions, but few succeed, in the sense of environment transformation; iii) the bad working conditions lead to an impoverishment of the correctional officers' personal existence itself; iv) the prison environment induces the victim hood of the individuals, officers and prisoners alike.The results were discussed in the light of the declared concepts, which allowed explain, in the psychosocial point of view, the correctional officers' duty role as a paradoxical professional identity: sometimes a repressor agent, sometimes a resocializer agent.This distinctive ambiguity results from a precariously balanced situation among areas with opposed validity and among several different forces, and it is also a result of the interaction with the environment, which includes the group of correctional officers and the group of prisoners.

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