Juvenile criminal responsibility and regressive reforms

Abstract

 This paper begins with the historical evolution of the rights of children and adolescents, aiming to understand the underlying motivations behind discourses that promote the mass incarceration of impoverished teenagers living in conditions of socioeconomic vulnerability. These discourses present such incarceration as a supposedly necessary and unavoidable response to criminal offenses committed by individuals under the age of sixteen. Without claiming to exhaust the complexity of the issue, the paper offers a critical analysis of the potential social, legal, and ethical consequences arising from the implementation of a regime with these characteristics.