Opinion: The image of the typical criminal in the ‘Anticrime’ package and its effect on the black community
Who is the ‘typical criminal’? Moro’s concept is vague and studies show how gender, race and class influence the parameters of the police and justice systems
Article published by Carolina Toledo, consultant for the Institutional Violence programme at Conectas, Silvia Souza, legal assistant at Conectas and Maria Clara D’Ávila, member of the Rede Justiça Criminal, on the site, Justificando.
Throughout history, eugenics has sought to justify the unjustifiable and in Brazil and a number of other parts of the world, it has served to underpin atrocities perpetrated against millions of black people through their enslavement by colonists. Based simply on the idea that black people are naturally inferior in all aspects of the human condition this is, undoubtedly, the worst disgrace in the history of humanity.
And in the present day it is clear how some of the current players are inspired by these old racist concepts in their attempt to reinstate them in our legal system, as is the case of the image of the ‘typical criminal’, in bill number 882/2019, one of the proposals in the ‘Anticrime’ Package, presented in February by Minister Sérgio Moro.
