Análise do papel da ouvidoria pública no sistema prisional da Paraíba: atuação, contribuições e desafios

Abstract

The role of the Public Ombudsman's Office is to serve as a communication channel between society and public administration, aiming to facilitate the mediation of social conflicts and to promote social control. In the context of the prison system, this function takes on even more sensitive aspects, given the vulnerability of inmates and the lack of transparency in prison units. The Public Ombudsman's Office of the State Secretariat of Penitentiary Administration of Paraíba (SEAP/PB) is part of this context, not only in the treatment of demands but also in the promotion of institutional accountability. Accordingly, the general objective of this research is to analyze the performance of the Public Ombudsman of SEAP/PB from 2012 to 2023. As specific objectives: the concept of the Public Ombudsman was explained, with an emphasis on understanding its historical evolution as a channel of dialogue between public authorities and society; the forms and characteristics of the demands received by the Public Ombudsman's Office of the prison system of the State of Paraíba, Brazil, were listed, in order to understand how autonomy and independence affect their resolution; the legal and operational structure of the Public Ombudsman's Office of SEAP/PB was analyzed as a tool for social control and the promotion of participation, for the identification of patterns and trends of the Ombudsman's Office; and proposals for possible improvements to the SEAP/PB Public Ombudsman's Office were prepared. To this end, this investigation is based on the theoretical discussions of Cardoso (2010; 2012; 2016), Comparato (2005; 2016), Lemgruber, Musumeci, and Cano (2003), and Quintão (2015). Furthermore, the research is a single-case analysis and document analysis, with a qualitative approach. In this sense, to collect part of the data, we used the interview technique, employing a previously prepared script of questions as an instrument. The corpus of analysis was the answers to the interviews and the selected documents. The work contributes to the academic debate in the field of Political Science, focusing on the relevance of social participation and the strengthening of accountability practices in public administration, since, from the data analysis, gaps in the Ombudsman's Office’s performance and a lack of autonomy and independence in the execution of its functions were evident.