Necropolítica e Pesquisa-Intervenção sobre Homicídios de Adolescentes e Jovens em Fortaleza, CE

Abstract Given the growth of lethal violence in Northeastern Brazil, the article aims to psychosocially analyze the problem of homicides of adolescents and young people in Fortaleza, from the perspective of adolescents and young people inserted in peripheral territorialities of the capital of Ceara, as well as from the perspective of social policy professionals who work with such segments. The text is the result of an investigation based on dialogues of Social Psychology with both post-structuralist and post-decolonial references and uses Achille Mbembe’s notion of necropolitics as the main conceptual operator. The data were produced by an intervention-research conducted in the four locations in Fortaleza with the highest homicide rates in 2017, based on observations, interviews and discussion groups. The results indicate that, according to adolescents/young people and professionals participating in the study, the increase in homicides in adolescents/young people in Fortaleza, Ceara, stems mainly from the assumption of three aspects: transformations in the dynamics of urban violence as a result of the strengthening of criminal groups and of their territorial disputes, the effect of the policy of mass incarceration; misguided investments in “war on drugs” public safety policies, centered on ostensible policing, militarization of urban margins, and criminalization of poor and disenfranchised youth segments as “killable”; precarization of social policies aimed at such segments in neoliberal times. The article’s conclusions point to ways of preventing and coping with homicides.