Responses to increasing social concerns about crime are being played out on a number of fronts: on the one hand, there is increasing relevance and use of innovative technologies in criminal justice systems, such as the transnational sharing of forensic information in the European Union - through the sharing of genetic, biometric and custom data processed on a large scale. On the other hand, “classical” institutions of social control such as educational centres and prisons are reproduced and (re)legitimized. These are placed in ambiguous positions that span from punishment and retribution and re-education and rehabilitation.

This advanced training course explores how these new tendencies, despite appearing diverse and apparently disjointed, are part of safe practices of risk management that reproduce and amplify selective practices of police and judicial institutions, perpetuating and reinforcing processes of discrimination and stigmatization of groups and social categories most vulnerable to criminalization. Given these pillars of reflection, this CES Summer School invites students to critically reflect on the forms certain control mechanisms pose particular challenges at the current citizenship configurations. 

Scientific Coordination: Helena Machado
Coordinators: Filipe Santos, Rafaela Granja and Susana Costa

The programme is organised around four main themes that include elements ranging from criminal investigation and the enforcement of educational tutelary measures to criminal conviction.

1. Criminal investigation using DNA technologies in Portugal;
2. European cooperation in combating crime based on the sharing of genetic information;
3. Execution of educational tutorial measures;
4. Enforcement of prison sentences.

The teaching team is formed by social scientists with vast and consolidated experience in these subjects.

At the end of the course, the students will be able to:

1. Know theoretical and methodological tools in the area of social studies of forensic genetics, crime and penalties;
2. Analyse the mobilisation of technologies in criminal investigation;
3. Understand the exchange of DNA information in the framework of cross-border police cooperation within the European Union;
4. Apprehend the social and legal dimensions of compliance with tutelary measures;
5. To explore the implications of the coexistence of criminal rationalities in the experiences of seclusion and social reintegration;
6. Reflect critically on issues of power and inequality articulated with the interrelationships between science, technology and social control;
7. Discuss the citizenship configurations related to the use of surveillance technologies and practices among certain social groups.

The course will involve several expository sessions and four practical activities, namely: i) a workshop on the construction of criminal narratives; ii) a field trip to the prisons of Coimbra; iii) a mock trial developed in the classroom and iv) a broad debate about citizenship configurations and mechanisms of social control
 

Target audience: students from all levels of university education and professionals in the areas of social sciences, criminology, law, social work, law and science sciences

Duration: 20 hours

Registration: Students: 25 euros | Regular: 40 euros

The course will be held with a minimum of 13 registrations and a maximum of 20. 

Organisers: Project Exchange and Science, Economy and Society Research Group (NECES)

JULY 5 | Educational Centers and Prisons

9:00-9:30. Introduction to the course. Filipe Santos, Susana Costa and Rafaela Granja

09:30-11:00. Session 1. Juvenile delinquency and the (non) responses of the juvenile justice system. Vera Duarte

This session has as main objective to discuss the expressions of juvenile delinquency - legal, statistical and media - from the (non) answers of prevention and intervention of the juvenile justice system.

11:00-11:15. Coffee break

11:15-12:45. Session 2. Criminal Rationalities. Rafaela Granja.

This session aims to explore the trends, rationalities, governmentalities and policies that currently characterise and shape the current landscape of prison systems. In particular, we will discuss socioeconomic changes, metamorphoses at the level of governmentality strategies and organisational changes in the current criminal contexts.

14:30-16:00. Activity 1. Visit to the Coimbra Prison. (Dependent on authorization of the Directorate General for Reinsertion and Prison Services)

16:15 - 17:45. Session 3. Prison - The miraculous ingenuity? Paula Sobral

This session will briefly discuss the configurations of citizenship and the legal position of the prisoner in the context of the so-called Prison Treatment and in the enforcment of the purposes of the sentence. Some paradoxes, practical difficulties of access to Law and Citizenship in the context of the execution of the custodial sentence will also be critically discussed, thus demonstrating the existence of practical (security) rationalities conflicting with legal rationales and narratives.

18:00. Exhibition. Radical Exclusions. A female prison world. Guided Tour. Claudia Cristina Carvalho

2 Floor Hall, CES | Alta

JULY 6 | Forensic genetics and criminal investigation

9:30-11:00. Session 4. Visibilities and invisibilities at the crime scene and its impact on the construction of criminal narratives. Susana Costa

This session intends to address the (in)visibility of the criminal investigation, made known at the crime scene by the Criminal Police agencies and how they allow the construction of evidence in a court of first instance and, again, how these same (in)visibilities can be recovered by appeal of the judicial sentence.

11:00-11:15. Coffee break.

11:15-12:45. Session 5. DNA functions in criminal investigation. Filipe Santos

From five criminal cases, this session will focus on the perspectives of criminal investigators in order to understand and characterise how DNA technologies can be understood in terms of the meanings attributed to their uses and products, whether finalised or expected.

14:30-16:00. Session 6. Transnational crime fighting. Filipe Santos

This session will highlight the trajectory and implementation of the Prüm Treaty which has implemented the automated exchange of genetic profiles between the Member States of the European Union with a view to promoting cooperation in the fight against organised crime, terrorism and illegal immigration. In particular, some data will be presented to reflect on the criminological, legal and ethical challenges of transnational sharing of DNA profiles.

16:00-16:30. Coffee break

16.30 -18.00 Activity 2. Workshop - Construction of criminal narratives. Susana Costa

Based on the police reports and photographic reports prepared by the police at the crime scene, this session objective is that students, organised in groups, construct a narrative about the case and how it unfolded. At the end, the steps given in the case and the narrative(s) made along the chain of custody of the evidence will be presented in summary form.

20:00: Course dinner (optional)

JULY 7 | Prisons and Citizenship Settings

09:00-10:30. Session 7. Prison experiences of men and women inmates. Rafaela Granja.

In this session we analyse how the experiences of imprisonment are shaped by gender and what their social, relational and economic implications are. The discussion will focus on how male and female inmates creatively negotiate a space through which they attempt to maintain some of the social roles they held in the pre-sentence period and to circumvent the limitations imposed by imprisonment.

10: 30-11: 00. Coffee break

11: 00-12: 30. Session 8. Prison, penitentiary treatment and social reintegration. Sílvia Gomes.

In this session we intend to discuss the perceptions and experiences of inmates over and in prison and how this interferes in their social reinsertion. In particular, it will address, on the one hand, how the mechanisms of social control and penitentiary treatment are experienced and perceived by the "clients" of the prison system, and, on the other hand, the impact they consider it has in their life experiences and future criminal experiences during post-confinement, configuring their notions of justice, law and citizenship.

14:30-16:00. Activity 3. mock Trial. Susana Costa, Filipe Santos

In the development of the mock trial, students will have the opportunity to explore contents covered in the previous days in a practical context, from the approach to the crime scene, to the uses of forensic genetics, and to criminal measures. From a fictitious case, the students will have access to information pertinent to the role they play during the trial (witness, defendant, judge, lawyer, etc.). After the presentation of all the evidence and its discussion, a decision of conviction or acquittal shall be determined collectively.

16:00-16:30. Coffee break.

16:30-18:00. Activity 4. Broad debate on citizenship configurations and social control mechanisms. Moderators: Rafaela Granja, Sílvia Gomes and Claudia Cristina Carvalho.

This final session, which aims to involve all participants, will discuss how the various social control mechanisms discussed throughout the course pose various challenges to citizenship configurations. The selective practices of justice systems and the (re)production of new and old forms of discrimination and stigmatization will be the structuring themes of this session.

6:00 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. Course closure and participant feedback.

Filipe Santos has a Ph.D. in Sociology by the Institute for the Social Sciences of the University of Minho (2015). Presently, he is a post-doctoral researcher in the project "EXCHANGE - Forensic geneticists and the transnational exchange of DNA data in the EU: Engaging science with social control, citizenship and democracy", financed by the European Research Council (ref: 648608) and hosted at the Centre for Social Studies. Author and co-auhtor of several publications, his research interests are focused on the intersections between criminal justice and forensic genetics, privileging theoretical approaches from the science, technology and society studies.

Paula Sobral é licenciada em Serviço Social e Direito e tem uma Pós-graduação em Direitos Humanos - FDUC. Frequenta o Curso de Doutoramento Direito, Justiça e Cidadania do Séc. XXI na Universidade de Coimbra (FEUC e FDUC). É técnica Superior de Reeducação da Direção Geral de Reinserção e Serviços Prisionais desde 1989, e atualmente ocupa o cargo de Substituta Legal do Diretor no Estabelecimento Prisional de Coimbra.

Rafaela Granja holds a PhD in Sociology (2015) and is currently a Post-doctoral researcher in the project "EXCHANGE - Forensic Geneticists and the Transnational Exchange of DNA data in the EU: Engaging Science with Social Control, Citizenship and Democracy", funded by European Research Council and based at Centre for Social Studies. Her current research explores topics of technological surveillance of "criminal populations"; the controversies around the intersections between family, genetics, and crime in different disciplines; and reconfigurations of family relationships inside and outside the prisons.

Sílvia Gomes é doutorada em Sociologia (2013), investigadora de pós-doutoramento na Universidade do Minho (SFRH/BPD/102758/2014). É investigadora integrada no Centro Interdisciplinar em Ciências Sociais – polo Universidade do Minho (CICS.NOVA UMinho) e professora auxiliar convidada do Instituto Universitário da Maia (ISMAI). Das suas publicações mais recentes, destaca-se a obra “Caminhos para a prisão – Uma análise do fenómeno da criminalidade associada a grupos estrangeiros e étnicos em Portugal” e a coedição do livro “Mulheres e crime: Perspetivas de intervenção, violência e reclusão”. O seu trabalho de investigação insere-se nos estudos sociais do crime, designadamente criminalidade, desigualdades sociais e etnicidades, media e crime, reinserção no pós-reclusão, reincidência e desistência criminal.

Susana Costa is a researcher at Centre for Social Studies - Associate Laboratory and member of the Research Group on Studies on Science, Economy and Society (NECES) of University of Coimbra. She has a PhD in Sociology. She has a pos-doctoral grant funded by FCT with a project intitled "DNA and crime investigation - a sociological comparative analysis of their evolution and impacts in Portugal and UK. She was a Ph.D.student in University of Coimbra and fellow of FCT since 2004 until 2009 with a project entitled "Children of (their) mother.Institutional Actors, Expertises and Paternity Claims in the Portuguese Judicial System" and she has a MA in Sociology with the thesis entitled Justice in the Lab. The identification of genetic profiles. Between transnacional harmonization and local appropriation (2001). In 1996 she had a BA in Sociology, School of Economics of University of Coimbra. In the last years her research interests have been focused on the relations between science and law and in the way genetics and DNA test have become common in the courtroom. Her researches have been focused in social studies of science, sociology of science and sociology of law.

Vera Duarte é Socióloga, doutorada em Sociologia (2011), pela Universidade do Minho, com um projeto financiado pela FCT sobre Delinquência juvenil feminina. Professora desde 2001, atualmente é Professora Auxiliar no Instituto Universitário da Maia (ISMAI) e Professora Convidada na Universidade do Minho (UM). É investigadora no Centro Interdisciplinar em Ciências Sociais (CICS.NOVA, polo UMinho) e na Unidade de Investigação em Criminologia e Ciências do Comportamento (UICCC/ ISMAI), da qual é atualmente diretora. O trabalho de docência, produção científica e investigação tem sido, predominantemente, nas áreas da sociologia do crime e da marginalidade, com foco na delinquência juvenil, criminalidade feminina e sistema de justiça juvenil.