Forensic psychiatric reports in the enforcement of security measures: institutionalization and psychiatric reform in Paraíba, Brazil

Resumen

In the year that Law No. 10.216/2001, the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform, turns 25, this article — the result of an undergraduate research report developed within the scope of scientific initiation, articulated with extension activities and popular legal assistance at the Federal University of Paraíba — critically analyzes the interface between criminal psychiatric expertise and security measures. The study aims to investigate how the discourses present in the reports of the Dangerousness Cessation Verification Examination (EVCP) and in judicial decisions dialogue, or not, with the legal frameworks for the protection of people with psychosocial disabilities and with the anti-asylum policy. Based on documentary analysis of forensic psychiatric reports and criminal enforcement proceedings in Paraíba, the persistence of the notion of dangerousness as the structuring axis of decisions is evidenced, even after its formal overcoming. The results indicate that the EVCP, characterized by a speculative judgment about the future, operates as a mechanism for legitimizing the maintenance of institutionalizations. It is concluded that this dynamic of knowledge — psychiatric and legal — contributes to the reproduction of discriminatory and ableist practices, compromising fundamental guarantees such as the adversarial principle and the right to a broad defense, and revealing the persistence of an asylum rationality within the penal system, in complete disagreement with the principle of care in freedom.