Institutions, discourses and violence: the association between madness and danger

Abstract

Individuals who infringe the law but are declared legally un-punishable are, in some cases, committed in specific institutions, known in Brazil as Judiciary Madhouses. This paper analyzes the characteristics of the psychiatric and judiciary discourses that operate in these cases, its consequences for the subjects and their institutional and social functionality. It takes the psychiatric verdicts of individuals housed in the Psychiatric Treatment Area of the Coméia Prison in Brasilia-Brazil and constitutes it as the main information upon which this analysis is based