Ceremonial Hearings: Juvenile Justice as a Loosely Coupled System

In Brazil, the first contact an adolescent-offender has with the Judiciary is with the Prosecutor. At the Public Ministry, the teenagers will proceed to an Informal Hearing, which are considered to be an important moment since it gives the adolescent the right to speak. The objective of this research was to investigate the actual role of the Informal Hearings in the decision-making process.
The research used a qualitative approach, collecting ethnographic data of the court. During 4 months, I weekly visited the juvenile court in São Paulo City and watched the Informal Hearings of five different Prosecutors. There are currently nine prosecutors in São Paulo juvenile justice. Through direct observation, I was able to make field notes which were the basis of the analysis. Informal Hearings indeed represent the myth of a participative justice, but their actual importance to the final decision is lower. Every prosecutor, and even their scriveners, have already taken the decision before hearing the teenagers, based only on the documents. The scriveners have the final document written before the Hearing start. Juvenile participation is an institutional rule which is necessary to the maintenance of the juvenile justice system itself. However, it contradicts the necessity for effectiveness within court. It is possible to say, then, that the juvenile justice is a loosely coupled system, and the Informal Hearings occur ceremonially, as to maintain the myth of a participative justice