A resounding No
Civil society, Judiciary and Executive reject lowering the age of criminal responsibility at a public hearing in the Senate
The Constitution and Justice Commission of the Senate discussed today, August 11, in a public hearing, Constitutional Amendment Proposal 33/2012 to reduce the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16 for serious crimes – those described in Brazil’s Heinous Crimes Law, as well as premeditated murder, bodily injury resulting in death and aggravated robbery. In these cases, the Public Prosecutor’s Office in each state would have to prepare a report asking the judge to reduce the age of criminal responsibility.
The proposed amendment, drafted by Senator Aloysio Nunes, has already received a favorable vote from its sponsor in the Commission, Senator Ricardo Ferraço – who did not participate in today’s hearing. If approved by the Commission, the amendment will be voted on the Senate floor, where it will need a qualified majority in two rounds of voting before proceeding to the Lower House of Congress.
Representatives from 15 civil society organizations and bodies of the Executive and the Judiciary debated the constitutionality and the content of the amendment. For most of the participants, the text commits the same error as Amendment 171/93, approved a year ago by the lower house of Congress, by considering young people as the perpetrators instead of the victims of violence.
One of the most emphatic statements was made by the National Human Rights Secretary, Flavia Piovesan, who said the reduction of the age of criminal responsibility “violates constitutional and international frameworks” and “lacks any factual grounding” as a solution to violence and impunity. “The simplicity and immediacy of the measure makes it incapable of solving the complex challenges facing Brazil, which has one of the highest murder rates among young people anywhere in the world,” she said.
According to research published in 2015 by Flacso (Latin American School of Social Sciences), 29 children and adolescents aged up to 19 are killed in Brazil every 24 hours. It also revealed that Brazil is third in the ranking of countries with the highest murder rate in this age group.
“This shows a real indifference towards the poor black youth of Brazil,” said Mariana Chies, coordinator of the Childhood and Youth Commission of IBCCrim (Brazilian Criminal Sciences Institute). “In situations when adolescents have their rights threatened or violated, it is not they who are in the wrong, but instead the institutions that are responsible for their well-being,” she said.
Chies also pointed out the growth in the number of adolescents deprived of liberty: between 1996 and 2013, there was a 443% increase. “We are increasingly punishing our adolescents with detention. [Lowering the age of criminal responsibility] is populist rhetoric devoid of any empirical arguments,” she added.
For some at the hearing, besides unconstitutional and ineffective in combating violence, the proposed amendment is also counterproductive because it would deliver more people into the hands of the criminal gangs that currently control the prison system.
“We have a prison system that doesn’t rehabilitate anyone. On the contrary, at some point these people will return to society and we forget about this,” said Bruno Moura, of the Bahia State Public Defender’s Office. “If we want to address the problem of violence, we need to take a different approach,” he concluded.
According to Raquel Lima, a representative of the Criminal Justice Network, the approval of the amendment would be inadmissible and violate international treaties signed voluntarily by Brazil, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which sets the age of criminal responsibility at 18. She said that countries such as the United States have already faced international condemnation for violating this rule.
Of the 15 speakers at the hearing, only two were in favor of approving the amendment: Congressman Laerte Bessa, sponsor of Amendment 171/93 in the Constitution and Justice Commission of the Lower House, and Wladimir Sérgio Reale, vice president of Adepol (Association of Police Commissioners). Bessa said he supported Amendment 33 because “the Brazilian people are sick of impunity for violent youth”. “The reduction of the age of criminal responsibility would only apply for irremediable criminals,” he said.
The statement by the congressman drew condemnation from the other authorities and experts on the panel. “The Constitution and the Child and Adolescent Act repeat several times that young people must be treated with dignity and respect. There is no such thing as a child or adolescent irremediable criminal,” refuted Olympio de Sá, a prosecutor from the Paraná State Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Watch the full debate below:
