Criminology, penal law, and criminal justice in Brazil

a review of the recent research

Abstract

    The present review aims to show the importance of the literature appeared in the last few years that approaches the problem of the criminological thought in Brazil. The article seeks to un­derstand the main scientific, legal, and social purposes present in the criminological discourse, mainly in the context of the criminal justice system reform, during the foundation of the Republic, in the end of the 19th century. The article accesses the debate that, in a sense, placed in opposite sides legal experts that supported a conception of the rule of law, stressing legal warranties to the defendants and the maintenance of the jury and those that supported the criminology propositions.based on ideas borrowed from medicine, psychiatry, and forensic sciences. The article concludes that criminology had a fundamental impact on the criminal justice system reform and on the control of the poor through a conception of unequal state treatment for unequal people. The social sciences in Brazil, in order to build new criminal practices and policies, must not forget this historical pitfall. It must, nevertheless, observe those recent debates on the new culture of security, the growth of incarceration, and the harde­ning of prison.