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In Brazil, the presence of psychology in prisons was established by the Criminal Sentence Execution Act, in 1984, and it was intensified in the past three decades. In the paper, the results of a study are discussed to understand the activity of psychologists in the prisons in Minas Gerais, based on clinical approaches to the work. We performed a qualitative research, with content analysis of documents, observations in five prisons, and interviews with 14 psychologists who work at these prisons. We verified that the role of psychology in prisons has been controversial, with different institutional intersections resulting from the security and punishment logic, which seems to frequently oppose professional ethical principles. The institutional demand for classifying prisoners overlaps with the monitoring of rehabilitation programs, set forth by law. This scenario, worsened by the lack of professionals, results in obstructions in the activity, the distress of the worker, trivialization of the violation of rights, and uncritical adhesion to the repressive mechanism of the institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychological assessment in the context of transit has been evident in Psychology in recent years amid the changes in legislation and questions about its validity. So can develop and achieve their goals it is necessary to understand trends and gaps concerning what has been researched in recent years. The present study compared published articles in the database Pepsic and Scielo and papers presented in the four editions of the Brazilian Conference of Psychological Assessment. From the keywords driver, psychological assessment, transit and drives, there were selected 22 articles and 38 papers at the congress, dated between 2000 and 2009. The results showed in general, an increased interest in the area. A larger number of papers at the congress was found, in order to verify that the most of research results do not reach effectively for publication. Among the studies reviewed, there is prevalence of empirical studies focused mainly on the investigation of personality and attention, using a large variety of instruments (n = 24), most are not specific to the context of traffic, and apply in their majority in driver's candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]