The meeting focused on the extent reached by Salesian works as regards its attention to young people in conflict with the law and on the relevance and forms of influence that Salesians can assert, both with the judicial authorities and with the governments of Brazil and of Mexico.
The exchange of experiences and their proximity to the concrete practices of some works of the State of São Paulo has allowed to deepen the importance and urgency of qualified support to minors who have broken the law, to involve the latter in efforts to prevent relapses, that is, in the work of recovery and reintegration in the family and in the community, in education and employment.
Already known in Salesian circles is the experience of "socio-educational measures" in Brazil, which concern the accompaniment of minors on probation and the accompaniment in the provision of community services for those young people who are sent to Salesian social works for the care of children in various stages of their legal process.
In the same way, the two Salesians also visited those institutions that look after young people who live in a controlled environment, that is, those who are serving their legal measure of internment, but who see the Salesian institutions allied in the accompaniment during their trials. These procedures have been initiated in several social works in Mexico and have made it possible to share enrichment models from both regions since, due to the specific situations of violence in Mexico, deemed urgent is the need to create specialized protection houses for young people who wish to abandon armed groups and groups linked to organized crime, as well as for those who are ending their precautionary measures but find their reintegration into their own context impossible.
For this reason, the wealth of the network makes it possible to appropriate the model of the Salesian protection houses of the Province of Colombia-Medellín in order to create a similar model in Mexico.
Finally, the meeting also allowed to share the ways in which both Salesians are involved in government structures to collaborate online with other similar institutions and to promote public policies in favor of young people who find themselves in these vulnerable conditions: in fact, the large majority of the children who are involved in socio-educational measures have been – first, and at the same time - victims of a system that marginalizes, excludes and does not offer them the traditional protection factors.
