This dissertation analyzes the normative arrangements that qualify expressions of the phenomenon of violence as a field of intervention of the National Social Assistance Policy - PNAS / 2004. It is a qualitative research, based on the document analysis method, which stopped examining the concepts that inform and the attributes that claim violence as an object of Social Assistance, linked, in the current institutional design, to Special Social Protection of Medium Complexity. The interpretation of the data was based on the methodology of content analysis, a resource that allowed the identification of the coexistence of the protective discourse with elements that refer to the punitive control of families, especially those in situations of poverty. The results obtained allow us to recognize the paradoxical relationship between protection and punishment in the contemporary arrangements of the Social Assistance Policy, which are instituted in a democratic context, marked by a notable advance in conservatism, but still in force under the rule of law.