Justiça criminal restaurativa e empoderamento no Brasil: experiências, possibilidades e limites

Abstract

The object of this thesis is Restorative Criminal Justice in Brazil, aiming to analyze its potential for empowering people involved in criminal conflicts. Therefore, was chosen the qualitative approach to the problem, using the Case Study methodology, implemented through collecting and analyzing of documents, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, which brought empirical data and bibliographic survey, with works on Criminology and Restorative Justice, as well as references on Empowerment, to give theoretical support to the research. Among the documents studied are decisions of Brazilian courts, as well as official reports on the country's punitive system, acts of the National Council of Justice and the National Forum of Mediation and Conciliation, and related bills. The questionnaires were answered by Restorative Justice agents from all over Brazil, the answers served as support for the selection of respondents, called facilitators and participants of Restorative Justice meetings in the cities of Porto Alegre, Brasilia, Sao Caetano do Sul, Caxias do Sul and Ponta Grossa. Three of the responsible for inserting the first pilot projects in the country were also interviewed. The material was systematically analyzed through content analysis, reaching the following categories: a) Restorative Justice: a practice in search of a concept ?; b) Crime and Restorative Justice: before, during, after or never ?; c) Empowerment of oneself from the encounter with the other; d) Restorative Justice as property; e) Volunteers in love. It was concluded from the data of the Brazilian punitive system that the search for new forms of conflict resolution is urgent and, from the literature and empirical data, the thesis that Restorative Justice is a viable instrument for empowerment of people involved in criminal conflicts was supported. The conceptual difficulty, the incipient application to serious crimes, the few cases when the traditional punishment are avoided, the great dependence on state and local authorities and to volunteer work, were raised as limits to the Restorative Justice. On the other hand, as possibilities, there is the empowerment experienced by participants in the opportunity to speak, listen and make decisions; there is also institutional mobilization from the judiciary, reaching other sectors of society, a fact that disseminates the new model of justice, mobilization that allowed the continuation of restorative justice in the places where it began (pilot projects) and to reach other locations in Brazil, including the criminal area.