Resocialization as an obstacle to the progressive system? A study on decision-making practices and judicial reasoning

• Grant number: 20/03826-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): October 01, 2020
• Effective date (End): June 30, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Law - Public Law
• Principal Investigator: Maira Rocha Machado
• Grantee: Mariana Morais Zambom
• Host Institution: Escola de Direito de São Paulo (DIREITO GV). Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 21/10582-3 - Les sens de la resocialisation: développement théorique et analyse empirique pour comprendre les décisions dans la gestion des sanctions, BE.EP.MS

Abstract

The present research project proposes to investigate the decision-making practices and justification speeches mobilized by the Superior Court of Justice (Superior Tribunal de Justiça - STJ), focusing on the fundamentals used in the judgments regarding regime progression and conditional release. Previous research has identified the existence of judgments of the Courts of Appeals that resort to resocialization (VALOIS, 2012; ROSA, 2019) and extra-legal criteria (ROSA, 2019) to substantiate the denial of these rights, preventing the execution of the sentence in a less stringent regime. Therefore, it is interesting to know, at first, the influences of the justification theories based on resocialization for the adoption of this guiding principle in the LEP, as well as the purposes of the progressive system of punishment and conditional release established by the legislator and presented in the Explanatory Memorandum of the Brazilian legislation of criminal execution (LEP) and the understanding of doctrine in that regard. Ahead, we intend to investigate how the arguments about resocialization are articulated in the Superior Court of Justice in cases involving requests for regime progression and conditional release and if there is any meaning for "resocialization" in the STJ's jurisprudence. In addition, special attention will be paid to how extralegal criteria - gravity of the offense, sentence to be served, attribution of serious disciplinary misconduct by the prison administration already rehabilitated and principle of in dubio pro societate - are mobilized in these criminal execution judgments by the STJ, the body responsible for ensuring uniformity interpretation of federal law. For this, 128 judgments obtained from the combination of keywords will be analyzed to access those that address the object of the research. At a later stage, the research intends to relate judicial decisions to the national and international literature available on the re-socialization process. (AU)