ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Gender, Sex and Sexualities
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1483042
This article is part of the Research TopicMasculinities, Empathy, Care, and Non-ViolenceView all 6 articles
STRAIGHT FROM FOSTER CARE TO THE YOUTH DETENTION CENTRE? THE (MIS)PATHS OF CHILD PROTECTION AND JUVENILE JUSTICE POLICIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF VIOLENT MASCULINITIES
Provisionally accepted
- Centre for Social Studies - University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
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The present article aims to understand how public policies for the protection of endangered children/youngsters and juvenile justice work together or, on the contrary, in a disjointed way, and its impacts on the reproduction of gender stereotypes, namely in the construction of rigid masculinities of youngsters in detention and the adoption of violence as an adaptive strategy. Youth Detention Centres (YDC) were chosen as a backdrop since young people at risk are a particular fringe of society who, similar to other vulnerable groups (e.g., migrants, refugees, etc.), face more significant risks of GBV, since they are displaced from their families and communities when they are admitted at Portuguese YDCs and their paths have invariably been marked by having witnessed or been exposed to violence, and often, as we shall see, to protective institutionalisation at an early stage in their journey.To this end, the role of YDC's will be traced within the framework of public policies on Juvenile Justice in Portugal, exploring the evolution of public policies aimed at both the risk and the social danger of children and young people, namely the effects of the separation that has taken place in Portugal of these two domains in the face of the effects of the promiscuity between the domain of danger and that of social risk.Results of the X-MEN Project, namely the youngsters' narratives on their life trajectories until entering the YDC, will be used to illustrate the relationship between gender socialisation (particularly of boys), the interpenetration between protective institutionalisation and its predictor of a pre-delinquent path and, finally, how gender can be the basis for differentiated treatment by the systems that work with young people in danger (Child Protection System) and at risk (Juvenile Justice System).
Keywords: Masculinities, Violence, Gender stereotypes, Public policies, child protection, Juvenile justice
Received: 19 Aug 2024; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mascarenhas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Marta Mascarenhas, Centre for Social Studies - University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
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