The “damned of inclusion”, or the normalization of the discourses and social processes of criminalisation of young adults in Portugal: a complex set of social, legal and criminal disruptions

Abstract

Portugal, with circa 10 million inhabitants, has almost 800 young people, aged 16-24 years, serving prison sentences. The majority comes from low-income families living in sensitive urban areas of Lisbon and Oporto, with low levels of education, and many are Afro-Portuguese or come from African Portuguese-speaking countries. These young people are thus identified with the neighbourhoods where they live, portrayed as violent and problematic. The narratives from the actors of the justice system we interviewed suggest that such depiction results from a set of plural disruptions – social, legal, and institutional – leading to the selectivity and criminalisation of this group of young people. We thus call them the “damned of inclusion” since the plurality of exclusions affecting them hasn’t been addressed holistically by the social inclusion programs created in the last decades. Since these young men are “caught under the radar”, there seems to be a criminal reaction from the law, the judicial practices and the prison system – which turns into a normalizing response.