Dissertação
O ensino de história para apenados(as) em Santa Maria: a construção de vivências históricas de apenados(as) nos presídios em Santa Maria e suas vivências históricas
Autor
Schirmer, Janete Teresinha
Institución
Resumen
Imprisonment has always been used by mankind. From the shackles and cages of primitive
peoples, past the Brazen Bull of the Greeks, where they confined the condemned in a kind of
chamber over the fire, and the Roman cages, for the crows to devour the condemned then used
extensively during the Inquisition in the Middle Ages to reach modern Austrian luxury prisons:
society has always sought to eliminate offenders from social life. During the early and Greco-
Roman period, this served much more to arrest and punish slaves of dominated peoples, but
also to offenders of established social agreements, as laws, and in the Inquisition to obtain the
confession of considered heretics. Later, during the Enlightenment, Rationalism and Humanism
came to question the situation of man before the world and strongly criticize existing methods
of penalties. The imprisonment itself arose, although under the same logic of keeping criminals
away from social life and using it as a way to drive out miserable people, prostitutes and others
who would not need this kind of withdrawal from society. With the Modern and Contemporary
ages, new thoughts about how treatment should be with the grieving ones came to the social
debate. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, with the postwar democratic
constitutions, have brought new legal orders regarding crimes and their criminal charges.
Prisoners, above all, came to be seen as a Human Being, subject to legal punishments provided
in specialized codes for these purposes, but with rights. The Brazilian Federal Constitution
expressly provides for the State’s responsibility towards all citizens, and must guarantee
fundamental rights; it also should cover inmates who are or will join the penitentiary system.
To those condemned, conditions must be provided for their social reintegration and nonviolation
of their rights as human beings. Thus, theses have emerged, such as resocialization,
commutation of sentences, possibility of progression of regimes in order to reduce the time of
compliance with sanctions and stay in prisons. Another very positive action is to institute access
to formal education aimed at re-education of the victims. The Law on Criminal Executions
(LEP) has attempted to fulfill two basic purposes: to enforce what the sentence or criminal
decision provides and to create opportunities and means for the victims to participate in social
reintegration. Thus, formal teaching in prisons and teaching history in particular have
contributed to these purposes. Due to the fact that few works refer to the teaching of History in
prisons, and being the field of our work, this work is the result of an action taken in History
classes of the Julieta Balestro School in the Regional Prison of Santa Maria (PRSM) and State
Prison of Santa Maria (PESM), in RS. The central idea is that inmates reconstruct their life
histories, aiming, through the narratives, to have insights of the moment and historical reality.
Although not exclusive, the work done does not focus on cognitive and psychological aspects,
focusing only on historical issues of inmates’s narratives.