Book investigating judicial biography of “Eliane case” is launched

The FGV Sao Paulo Law School has launched a book titled Labirintos judiciários, prisionais e de vida: um estudo de caso sobre a gestão das sanções de mulheres no estado de São Paulo (“Judicial, prison and life labyrinths: A case study on the management of women’s punishment in the state of Sao Paulo”) as part of its “Law and Development” series of publications.

Authored by Viviane Balbuglio, a doctoral student with a master’s in law and development from the school, the book investigates an “unintentional judicial biography,” based on a single case study: the Eliane case.

Eliane is a woman born in the city of Sao Paulo in 1989, the mother of eight children, who spent more than 10 years of her life embroiled in the Sao Paulo justice system. The case is mainly explored using the method of document analysis and it is the starting point for the book, which proposes looking at punishment from the perspective of those who experience it. In this context, it reveals the conceptual formulation of the “labyrinth of punishment management,” referring to a series of penalizing components to be considered in opposition to the flows institutionally established by the bodies that make up the justice system as a whole. This labyrinth involves judicial, prison and life practices, revealing that the linearity of carrying out justice is a fiction.

About the series

Law and Development is a series of free digital books by the FGV Sao Paulo Law School, including both works by individual authors and collections, produced in collaboration between professors and students on the school’s Academic Master’s and Doctoral Program in Law and Development.

Find out more about the Law and Development series.