A precarização institucional das DEAMS do Estado do Maranhão e o adoecimento político da/o policial: "uma máquina de moer gente"

Abstract

This research, titled "The Institutional Precarity of DEAMs in the State of Maranhão and the Political Illness of Police Officers: ‘a machine for grinding people’" analyzes the complex relationship between the work carried out in Specialized Women's Police Stations (DEAMs) and the mental health of public safety professionals. The central objective is to relate the work of civil police officers in the state of Maranhão to the psychosocial and professional impacts resulting from continuous exposure to gender violence and the dynamics of institutional violence. The research is based on the contradiction that, although DEAMs are spaces for protection, they impose a high emotional cost on police officers and can reproduce practices of negligence and gender hierarchies. The theoretical framework is interdisciplinary, articulating Dejours' (2021) Psychodynamics of Work, deepening the analysis of ethical and pathogenic suffering, Intersectional Feminism (Collins and Bilge, 2020), the Sociology of Emotions (Hochschild, 2012), and the theory of Gender as a device of domination and performativity (Foucault, 2021a; Butler, 2019). The methodology adopted is qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive. The study combines an extensive literature review (37 articles and 2 dissertations) with the analysis of field research, based on semi-structured interviews with civil police officers in Maranhão who have more than six years of experience in DEAMs. As an aspect of the conclusion, the research reveals that police officers' frustration is amplified by the bureaucracy of the justice system and the recurring withdrawal of victims from continuing the investigation. This scenario generates what Dejours (2021) conceptualizes as ethical suffering, as the professional's subjective investment, which requires the performance of an "affective" and welcoming "femininity," does not find symbolic validation within the institution, resulting in emotional exhaustion and psychological illness.