Aspectos da gestão da menoridade em Florianópolis e São Paulo (1930-1940)

The purpose of this article is to problematize the presence of practices of production or application of criminological knowledge within confinement institutions for minors in Florianopolis and Sao Paulo in the 1930s and 1940s. The relevant sources to the present reflection involve records of minors confined in the Penitentiary of Pedra Grande in Florianopolis in the 1930s and 1940s, and records of minors who were delivered to the Social Service of Assistance and Protection for Minors of Sao Paulo during the same period. The article seeks to establish comparative analysis processes between the two experiences of confinement of minors, identifying the mechanisms used by the institutions to generate medical, psychological, and social information that served to characterize those individuals for purposes of their legal, psychiatric and correctional treatment. Our argument is that criminological knowledge handled such information and was often used to classify and deal with the minors subjected to social control at that time. Keywords: criminology, social control, neglected children, delinquency, punishment.