| dc.description.abstract | This thesis is about the relationship between social movements and (criminal) law and their possible indirect influence on Brazilian criminal policy. There are two central objectives: firstly, analysing the role of law - especially criminal law - in the actions of social movements and for social change; and, secondly, understanding Brazilian criminal policy directed at discrimination crimes, motivated by prejudice or also referred to as hate crimes, and assessing whether it may be permeated by the demands of social movements. As such, this thesis is divided into two parts: the first one basically presents the theoretical framework, while the second one introduces the empirical research. The theoretical framework of this thesis involves the merger of four theoretical perspectives: (i) the theories of social movements; (ii) the theory of legal mobilization; (iii) the critical theory of (criminal) law; and, (iv) the perspectives of criminal policy analysis. Based on this framing of the analysis, it was concluded that not every expansion of criminal law constitutes "punitive populism" (irrational and unnecessary criminal policy). Legitimate criminal expansion is possible, with acceptable effectiveness, towards what is referred to as "left realism", provided that the following variables exist: (i) resulting from an actual social problem (ii) constituting harm to a significant legal interest; and, (iii) absorbing the discourse produced by the social agents involved/affected by this problem. The criminalization of "hate crimes" satisfies these requirements, since they are demands originating from social movements, which give rise to significant harm to a public legal interest, which is the dignity of members of certain social groups, whose historical status of being socially marginalized keeps them in a situation of inequality in terms of social status, which ends up jeopardizing the consolidation of democracy among them. According to the empirical research, not all Brazilian laws directed at tackling prejudice, nevertheless, follow this legitimate criminal policy. The research involved the identification and selection of Brazilian criminal laws (or laws with criminal significance) directed at tackling discriminatory violence or violence motivated by prejudice and respective documents produced during respective prosecution (totalling 34 laws, that is, around 11% of criminal laws approved during the period). For the analysis of the database and assessment of respective dialogue with the discourse of social movements, the decision was taken to limit the scope to three movements: Feminist, Black and LGBTQ. In this way, criminal laws aimed at race, gender, sex, sexual orientation and gender
identity (totalling 29 laws) were analysed. Out of these, only "gender identity" does not feature in any criminal law. The empirical research also involved interviews with activists from these social movements. The scope confirmed that there is a certain level of permeability between the actions of social movements and Brazilian criminal policy. In actual fact, laws that are closest to the discourse of the social movement involved result in greater effectiveness ("left realism"); while laws that do not originate from an actual empirical problem and do not absorb the discourse produced as part of social movements end up lacking effectiveness and taking shape as an unnecessary measure ("punitive populism"). | en |
