{"id":5580,"date":"2016-06-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.conectas.org.inf.br\/wp\/noticias\/supreme-court-small-time-trafficking-is-not-a-heinous-crime\/"},"modified":"2021-04-19T14:16:43","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T14:16:43","slug":"supreme-court-small-time-trafficking-is-not-a-heinous-crime","status":"publish","type":"noticia","link":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/supreme-court-small-time-trafficking-is-not-a-heinous-crime\/","title":"Supreme Court: small-time trafficking is not a \u201cheinous crime\u201d","content":"

In a turnaround, the Supreme Court issued a ruling today that could benefit tens of thousands of people arrested for small-time drug trafficking, particularly women. By eight votes to three, the court justices voted to not classify \u201cprivileged trafficking\u201d as a \u201cheinous crime\u201d carrying harsher penalties. Privileged trafficking is when the defendant is a first-time offender, has no criminal record and is not a member of a criminal gang.<\/span><\/p>\n

Until now, these people have had to serve the same prison sentences as rapists and kidnappers. Now, they will have the same rights as regular prisoners. If the classification had been approved, offenders would have to spend more time in closed and semi-open prisons \u2013 which, according to human rights organizations, would be unconstitutional and have an explosive effect on prison overcrowding.<\/p>\n

During today\u2019s session (the third on the same case), three justices changed their votes after hearing arguments presented by human rights organizations.<\/p>\n

Conectas, IBCCrim (Brazilian Criminal Sciences Institute), ITTC (Land, Employment and Citizenship Institute), the Igarap\u00e9 Institute and the Brazilian Drug Policy Platform submitted a memorial<\/u><\/a> and an amicus curiae<\/u><\/a> brief to the court emphasizing the harmful effects the classification would have on the prison population, particularly women.<\/p>\n

Edson Fachin, Teori Zavascki and Rosa Weber, who had already expressed their support for the classification, backtracked and voted with the Reporting Justice C\u00e1rmen L\u00facia and the other justices Roberto Barroso, Ricardo Lewandowski, Gilmar Mendes and Celso de Mello. Luiz Fux, Dias Toffoli and Marco Aur\u00e9lio were the only three to support the classification.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a major victory and the involvement of civil society in this case was decisive in turning the tables,\u201d said Rafael Cust\u00f3dio, coordinator of the Justice program at Conectas. \u201cWe managed to demonstrate, with technical and legal arguments and data, that the classification would only aggravate the situation for the impoverished black population from poor neighborhoods, particularly women, who due to their social vulnerability end up dealing small quantities within the trafficking networks,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

According to data from the Ministry of Justice from December 2014, 28% of the prison population are there for crimes related to drug trafficking. Considering only female prisoners, the rate rises to 64%.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s ruling is an important sign that Brazil can and should follow the global trend of reviewing the war on drugs policy. Incarceration has clearly failed as a strategy to deal with the problem and today we are starting to correct the distortions arising from this vision,\u201d said Cust\u00f3dio.<\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div>","excerpt":"

Ruling benefits thousands of first-time drug offenders<\/p>\n","author":2,"featured_media":8801,"parent":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,194],"tema":[12270],"class_list":["post-5580","noticia","type-noticia","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-drugs","tag-supreme-court","tema-confronting-institutional-violence"],"acf":{"author":false,"subtitle-pt":"Ruling benefits thousands of first-time drug offenders"},"yoast":{"focuskw":"","title":"","metadesc":"","linkdex":"","metakeywords":"","meta-robots-noindex":"","meta-robots-nofollow":"","meta-robots-adv":"","canonical":"","redirect":"","opengraph-title":"","opengraph-description":"","opengraph-image":"","twitter-title":"","twitter-description":"","twitter-image":""},"featured_image":{"original":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/stf.png","thumbnail":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/stf-150x150.png","medium":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/stf-300x199.png","medium_large":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/stf-768x510.png","large":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/stf.png","1536x1536":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/stf.png","2048x2048":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/stf.png","post_slider_img":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/stf.png","storyform_xlarge":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/stf.png","storyform_xxlarge":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/stf.png","storyform_xxxlarge":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/stf.png","noticia":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/stf.png"},"terms":{"acoes_categorias":[],"acoes_tags":[],"category":[{"term_id":7,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":7,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":1520,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","permalink":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/category\/news\/","relative_link":"category\/news\/","langs":{"en":"news","br":"noticia-conectas"}}],"post_tag":[{"term_id":111,"name":"drugs","slug":"drugs","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":111,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":27,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","permalink":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/tag\/drugs\/","relative_link":"tag\/drugs\/","langs":{"en":"drugs","br":"drogas"}},{"term_id":194,"name":"Supreme court","slug":"supreme-court","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":194,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":51,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","permalink":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/tag\/supreme-court\/","relative_link":"tag\/supreme-court\/","langs":{"en":"supreme-court","br":null}}]},"author_name":"Leonardo Medeiros","author_nicename":"leonardo-medeiros","protected":false,"langs":{"en":"supreme-court-small-time-trafficking-is-not-a-heinous-crime","br":"stf-trafico-privilegiado-nao-e-crime-hediondo"},"permalink":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/supreme-court-small-time-trafficking-is-not-a-heinous-crime\/","relative_url":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/supreme-court-small-time-trafficking-is-not-a-heinous-crime\/","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noticias\/5580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noticias"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/noticia"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5580"},{"taxonomy":"tema","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tema?post=5580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}