Abstract:
The Federal Constitution, currently in force, in its Art. 5 subsection VII, “ensures, within the terms of the law, provision of religious assistance in civil and military entities of collective internment” and Law 7,210/84, better known as the Penal Application Law (LEP), in its Art. 10, dictates “assistance to the imprisoned” as a duty of the State, with the goal of preventing crime and orientating the return to conviviality in society. Within the foreseen assistance to persons deprived of liberty, are health, social, material, educational, legal and religious assistance. Religious assistance, in turn, takes on an important and challenging perspective in the scope of criminal treatment and, although it is contemplated in the LEP since 1984, it is still, today, not often legitimated in the prison system. Confronted with this, this research sought to investigate through case studies, how religious assistance has been granted to people deprived of liberty, in their carrying out the Semi-open regime in the Penal Institute of São Leopoldo (IPSL), state of Rio Grande do Sul, and within this context, its contributions in the process of “re-socialization” and social reinsertion in observance of care with the dimension of human spirituality in the criminal treatment. The questionnaires applied with those deprived of liberty took place through voluntary adhesion, as also the interviews done with the directors of the Department of Criminal Treatment of the Superintendency of Penitentiary Services of Rio Grande do Sul, Regional Penitentiary Police Chief of the the 1st Penitentiary Region, where the Criminal Institute of São Leopoldo (IPSL) is located, Administrator of the Prison Establishment, representatives of the four religious denominations which provide assistance in the IPSL, among them the Universal Church, the Assembly of God, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil - IELB, the Prison Ministry of the Catholic Church, a person deprived of liberty who converted to the Gospel in prison and an ex-prisoner of the Prison System. The data collected in the interviews appear in the text dialoguing with the concepts presented in the triad religious assistance, people deprived of liberty and criminal treatment. The systematization and interpretation of the data collected through the application of the questionnaires and the interviews, were carried out through content analysis and dialog with the data of the bibliographic research, aiming at the socialization of the final results. The study related the collected data with the theoretical referential, hoping to fulfill the goals of the research and attest the hypothesis presented in the beginning of the investigation. It was observed in this specific group, that people with access to religious assistance can better reflect about their condition of imprisonment and re-signify new paths and attitudes which return to them their human essence, stimulating a spiritual and personal development. To think a spiritual assistance beyond the religious assistance could contribute to overcoming fundamentalist dialogs still very much present in society, including within the prison system. To think a spiritual and human development is to recover the idea of essence, love and life in abundance for all people.
