Almerindo is an old man. He has been living in a forensic hospital for the last 32 years of his life. When he was 18 years old, he threw a stone at a boy in order to steal the boy’s bike. In medical terms, he is a psychiatric patient; in criminal terms, he is an offender who did not receive a criminal sentence, but compulsory psychiatric treatment. In the overlap between forensic psychiatry and criminal law, Almerindo becomes a ‘dangerous man’ no longer allowed to live freely in Brazilian society. He falls into the hybrid category of the psychiatric offender. I met him while shooting my documentary ‘The House of the Dead’.1 He is now an abandoned man, with no place to go, no family ties, and in his own terms: ‘with no name.
