Violence and the Confinement in an Educational Facility: A Study about the Trajectory of Young Offenders Based on the Radar of Interpersonal Relationships

Cultural psychology is a branch of general psychology and it represents an important interpretative matrix that supports the analytical transit between the historical-cultural/institutional macro-context and the micro-context of interpersonal relations, in order to understand, from an idiographic perspective, the (trans)formation of de- velopmental trajectories of juvenile offenders in the flux of irreversible time. We discuss in this article three case
studies analyzed during nine months of ethnographic immersion, in which participants used different methods to evoke narratives and graphic representations of life trajectories. We explore here the Interpersonal Relations Radar (RRI). The results produced by the RRI indicate that, against the legal proposition, socio-educational measures do not (re)socialize young people, they also turn them unprepared for social participation and reduce significant networks previously existing around them. On the other hand, participants perceived the support provided bydifferent institutional actors as a source of protection, yet a weak one, which ceases to exist when the offenders are released. Thus, the existence of significant others that are seen as sources of social identification, leading the young people towards healthy trajectories and the projection of different futures, was something perceived as important for the achievement of developmental trajectories distant from the infraction.