“Na Portinha”: uma investigação sobre a entrada no sistema de justiça criminal

Abstract

The present thesis is an investigation into the procedural flow at the first instance of criminal justice and has as theoretical references two criminological aspects: conflict theory and symbolical interactionism. According to the commencing point of research, the creation of law and the establishment of criminally punishable behavior are defined on the political horizon, standing the problem on a macro-sociological field. In unequal societies, the creation of law and, in particular, the primary criminalization process are political and social processes defined by interests and submitted to the dimension of power. The abstract severity of certain criminal behaviors is therefore a result of the prevalence of certain interests, which reflect the relations of power and domination within the society. On the other hand, down to the micro-sociological level in the field of organizations' sociology, the practical action of social control institutions, especially the police and the judiciary, arouses interest of social science in the concrete action of agencies responsible for the enforcement of criminal law. From the social reaction paradigm, the thesis seeks to understand the problem of the construction of crime, i.e. secondary criminalization, understood as the processes of inclusion and exclusion within the justice system. The criminalization process, combining the production of rights and the dynamics of criminal agencies, occurs on two levels. It depends on the law and also on the institutions responsible for the enforcement of criminal law. Therefore, the action of formal criminal control bodies is so crucial for the social sciences, given the impact law enforcement has on the dynamics of crime production. The thesis seeks to discover the meaning of procedural flow, taking as field of research the criminal courts in the city of Juiz de Fora-MG. From the analysis of lawsuit data over a period of twelve years, between 2002 and 2014, the field research surveys the existing procedural archives in the criminal courts and the corresponding crime categories subject to lawsuit, in order to demonstrate links between the police and the judiciary and the settlement of power through concrete police actions. The thesis tries to question the disarticulation among the most significant instances of penalty, affirming the existence of a hidden ideological engagement between them and that, in the actual production mode of criminal justice, there is a reproduction of broader social relationships, being the judiciary the power that legitimizes and reinforces the selective control of crime.