Violence and Conflict in Schools: Analysis of Proposals based on Restorative Justice in Brazil

Abstract

This article intends to analyze some of the policies implemented in Brazil with a view to the prevent school violence and the mediation of conflict in the school. Among these policies, the following will be analyzed: the Justice for 21st century project: Instituting Restorative Practices, from Porto Alegre and the Justice and Education project: a partnership for citizenship, from São Paulo. These projects work with the forming of mediators to act in the scope of the school conflicts within the perspective of restorative justice. The analyses herein presented are based on papers published in journals and dissertations on the theme. One of the assumptions of the analysis is that the concern with the lack of security in the schools and with the conflict situations inside them has mobilized different public organs to draw up harder and more restrictive policies as well as a growing influence by the justice related organs to find solutions that initially would be the schools’ responsibility to deal with. Based on this, we highlight the phenomenon of the judicialization of social relations and in particular in the case of schools, which would be the passing on to justice organs the function of solving doubts that the various social groups do not consider themselves capable of answering. In this vein, proposals and projects for facing school violence and conflicts has been originated in organs related to the justice system, that even take on the task of preparing educators to work with the issue. The conclusion is that the pedagogical and educational character that is the responsibility of the school institution is passed on to the scope of law. In this manner, the school institution leaves off its role in the education for citizenship and stops analyzing the nature of its conflicts, from the standpoint of a collective effort within the school by involving the different groups that it composes, to seek the best solutions for these conflicts.