摘要：In this investigative article we draw upon the production of delinquency and its objectification by psychological knowledge during the twentieth century in Brazil. The analytical scope for this research comes from the archeogenealogical strategy put forward by Michel Foucault, whereby we investigated articles from the journal ‘Arquivos Brasileiros de Psicologia’ between 1949 and 1990. We selected 17 articles as analytical field in which the elements “youth”, “crime” and/or “delinquency” are present and through which four epistemological axes that legitimize delinquency as an object of study of psychology were delineated: 1. the demoralization of poverty (family inheritance); 2. sovereignty of internalization (biopsychological determinism); 3. symptomatology of contemporaneity; and 4. essentialization of youth. Through this analysis, we highlight how psychology constitutes the young subject as the representation of delinquency, but rather as the science that privatizes a domain over this object. Psychology, thus, become the necessary science to explain contemporary youth criminality.
关键词：Youth;Delinquency;Psychology;Production of knowledge;Juventude;Delinquência;Psicologia;Produção de conhecimento
