Confine, medicate and contain: forms of management and control in the hospitals of custody and psychiatric treatment in the State of São Paulo

Abstract

The proposal of this project is to investigate the strategies of management, control and care of people hospitalized in Hospitals of Custody and Psychiatric Treatment (HCTP's) of the state of São Paulo in the light of two major transformations: the Psychiatric Reform in Brazil, begun in the 1970s, and the spread of the use of psychotropic drugs and diagnoses of mental disorders in prisons throughout the country. These transformations, taken as two vectors that stress the day-to-day management of HCTPs, will be analyzed in order to understand the place of the Custody Hospitals within the wide prison network of control of the unwanted. The methodology to be used will be ethnographic fieldwork in the HCTP's, interviews with professionals who work directly with the patients-inmates and the analysis of the psychiatric reports and juridical records referring to people hospitalized in the three state prison hospitals: HCTP's I and II of Franco da Rocha and HCTP of Taubaté. (AU)