“IF YOU FINISH OFF THE BEGGAR, THE CRIMINAL, THE VAGRANT, YOU ELIMINATE THE PROBLEM. CUT IT OFF AT THE ROOT”: AN ANALYSIS OF RECIFE’S HOMELESS POPULATION BASED ON CUSTODY HEARINGS

Abstract

In this study, one investigates the biopolitical management of the homeless population in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, examining the connection between the precariousness of the sidewalks and the rigor of the state’s punitive apparatus. The phenomenon is approached under the premise of “social death,” in which administrative invisibility and state racism convert material insufficiency into legal dangerousness, consolidating a citizenship of exception. The primary objective is to analyze the operationality of custody hearings at the Court of Justice of Pernambuco (TJPE) as a strategy for implementing fundamental rights, verifying whether the guidelines of Resolution No. 425/2021 of the National Council of Justice (CNJ) manage to interrupt the cycle of criminalization of poverty. Methodologically, the research is configured as a qualitative and descriptive study, based on the cartography of punishment. The field of investigation comprises the Specialized Guarantees Center of the Capital, focusing on individuals living on the streets who underwent custody proceedings in 2024, using documentary analysis via the Electronic Judicial Process (PJe) under the theoretical framework, primarily, of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. The results reveal an alarming “procedural asphyxiation,” in which 65.2% (sixty-five point two percent) of those in custody who are homeless have preventive detention ordered, demonstrating that legal non-existence, lack of civil registration, and absence of housing transform helplessness into an obstacle to the investigation. It is concluded that the Judiciary, although adopting humanitarian norms, still acts as a validator of selective prosecution by imposing materially impossible precautionary measures, such as proof of a fixed address, requiring the strengthening of judicial literacy and the consolidation of territories of jurisdictional inalienability to break the cycle of abandonment.