Abstract: The reality of Therapeutic Communities is usually discussed from the perspective of the lack of state actions in the field of mental health to face the so-called “drug problem”. The objective of this article, however, is to analyze the existence of these projects, mostly religious, not as equipment that cover the absence of the state, but as spaces accessed by subjects whose lives are crossed by the excess of state interventions in the field of justice and of public security. The present work thus seeks to reflect on the theme of Therapeutic Communities from the perspective of the state treatment of the “problem of violence”, and how in this context the articulation between religious and secular projects dedicated to the control and care of populations in urban peripheries takes place.
Keywords:
Therapeutic Community; Pentecostalism; drugs; incarceration; violence.