Campinas, May 23, 1998

The better recognized violence is the one that is followed by a lot of blood and at least a corpse taken to the morgue. In the beginning of the century, the better accepted theory was mainly credited to Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), an Italian physician who believed that the more similar to a monkey were the human being physical features the closer to bestiality would be a person. The crime was considered a "biologically inherited compulsion" in a large number of cases before this theory was plainly abandoned.

From the social causes of violence: the broadcasted violence through the media shows up as one important factor that might be controlled either by the inconvenience of self censorship or through governmental intervention, perhaps both.

From the psychiatric causations: the lack of limits ( for instance: children obtaining intimacy with gun handling, as in the recent tragedy of the 11 and 13 years old boys in Arkansas, USA; nevertheless, everywhere in the third world, children and adolescents quite often commit armed assaults, or operate the narcotraffic delivery system ) this is a problem to be faced up through community initiative; life cannot go unruly forever, the human consequences are too serious.

In 1997, a group of Brazilian youngsters imbibed with combustible and burned up a Patasho Indian. April, 98, in Jacareí, S. Paulo, a High School teacher was killed after confronting two late adolescents involved in trafficking drugs. Said one of the two young killers, showing no remorse: "She was an informant, she deserved to die."

Even those believers in everything being conveniently solved through the sale and utilization liberation of the now illicit drugs, they do stay without a good answer as the traffic takes root in the child and adolescent school environment. It won’t take long for kindergarten children to debate if it has been fair to them, being left aside and deprived of wonder drugs and their special effects, when 6 and 7 years old kids might know the whole works, being largely exposed to up-to-dated hallucinogenic substances. But such a drama does not concede license for the comedy.

What is the responsibility of someone for his own acts? Acts that are determined by many factors away from individual control. Punishment or correction are late measures that cover up for the collective omission.

Dr. Silvio Saidemberg , professor of psychiatry, PUCCAMP Medical College, S. Paulo, Brazil; post graduated fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry by The University of Rochester, N.Y.