Abstract
The article aims to contribute with analyzes concerning the contact provided by pretrial detentions among arrested citizens and criminal justice players, mainly judges, and to what extent this meeting impacts (or not) the production of the decision. The text is based on a research conducted during pretrial detentions in some cities in the state of São Paulo, which featured semi-structured interviews and field observation to build the empirical corpus studied. From the analysis of these contacts, categories were created to describe how these encounters take place. We have defined five types of contacts: eye-to-eye, eyes on the “person of right”, eyes on moral rules, eyes on the screen and eyes on the facts. In spite of the ambivalences portrayed, the pretrial detention represents an improvement by allowing the judge to notice who the arrested person is. However, it is still important that this look can really allow the person to be seen, otherwise, the pretrial detention is likely to become an automated pre-procedural phase of judicial production.
Pretrial detention; contact; legitimacy; judiciary; human rights