HUMAN RIGHTS: Brazilians Clamour for Tougher Crackdown on Juvenile Offenders

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 16 2007 (IPS) - Lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16, stiffening penalties for juvenile offenders and reducing legal benefits for prisoners are proposals that have been gaining support in Brazil over the past week, after the brutal dragging death of a six-year-old boy shocked the country.

Joao Helio Fernández died on Feb. 7 when carjackers did not give his mother time to help him out of his tangled seatbelt, and he was dragged for seven kilometres along the streets of Rio de Janeiro, as people on the sidewalks and in other vehicles screamed helplessly at the driver to stop. The boy’s head and fingers were torn from his body.

Since his gruesome death, thousands of local residents have held protests calling for tougher anti-crime measures. Once again, statements in favour of the death penalty have been heard. But the most popular suggestion is to reduce the age of criminal responsibility to 16. One of the five suspects arrested for the carjacking and murder is 16, while the rest are adults.

Advocates of the measure argue that teenagers feel free to commit serious crimes because they know that they will merely spend three years in a juvenile detention centre and be released when they turn 21. This is why minors are so widely recruited by drug gangs and other organised crime, and why minors often take the rap for murders that were actually committed by adults.

In 1988, amendments to the Brazilian constitution extended the right to vote to 16 and 17-year-olds. Prosecutors, legal experts and others calling for suspects this age to be tried as adults assert that if they are old enough to choose their political leaders, they are also old enough to be held responsible for their crimes.

But Ivonio Barros Nunes, the coordinator of the Fórum de Entidades Nacionais de Direitos Humanos (Forum of National Human Rights Groups), told IPS that “at times like this, it’s impossible to debate more rational and effective measures against violence, while the news programmes, especially on television, fan the flames of indignation in favour of conservative proposals.”

The age of criminal responsibility of 18 “is not set in stone” in Brazil, but lowering it “will not fix anything,” he argued, saying “this debate is headed in the wrong direction.”

Youngsters under 18 who commit crimes are not exempt of legal action, as many believe, just because they are dealt with under the Statute on Children and Adolescents instead of the penal code. But juvenile offenders are sentenced to reformatories instead of prison.

However, in practice, these special institutions are little different from ordinary penitentiaries.

Furthermore, a study by the Street Children’s Movement concluded that adolescents who are sent to locked juvenile detention facilities spend more time there on average than adult offenders spend in prison, said Barros Nunes, who pointed out that most adult prisoners do not serve out their entire sentences, but earn day-release privileges or are released early on parole, benefits offered by a “very complex penal code.”

Adopting stiffer sentences would change little in a country where impunity reigns, he said. Studies show that in Rio de Janeiro, only eight percent of all crimes are investigated – a proportion that is probably similar in other large cities – while a much smaller fraction of crimes lead to convictions.

But the brutal crimes that have become routine in Brazil’s large cities, like the late December burning of a crowded bus in which eight people were killed and many more injured on a highway near Rio de Janeiro, have fuelled the clamour for a tougher stance on crime.

On Thursday, the Chamber of Deputies passed a draft law that would double the sentences for those found guilty of inciting a minor to commit a crime. And in the Senate, the Human Rights Commission approved a proposal to add between four and 15 years to the sentences handed down to adult offenders who involve children or adolescents in the commission of a crime.

The first bill still has to make it through the Senate, and the second must go to the floor of both houses. But they reflect the hasty reaction by legislators to the public’s call for stiffer penalties.

Many political leaders and legal experts, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Ellen Gracie, have warned that it is not a good idea to make decisions of this kind in the heat of the moment.

The age of criminal responsibility, for example, cannot be lowered by means of an ordinary law, but would require a constitutional amendment, which must be approved by a 60 percent majority in both houses of Congress. Some experts say it is indeed cast in stone, like the abolition of the death penalty, and that it could only be modified if a new constituent assembly were convened to rewrite the constitution.

The human rights movement and institutions that are traditionally identified with pro-democracy struggles in Brazil, like the bar association and the Catholic bishops’ conference, are trying to shift the direction of the debate. They have called a “forum to overcome violence and promote a culture of peace” to discuss measures to more effectively fight crime, “with calm” and without “a climate of vengeance.”

Barros Nunes said the human rights movement is pushing for the creation of “a system of ombudspersons” like the ones that exist in Argentina, Colombia and other countries of Latin America.

The proposal is to implement the creation of “peace judges,” as contemplated by the 1988 constitution, but not yet put into effect.

These authorities, elected in voting districts of between 5,000 and 10,000 people, and accompanied by community commissions, would act as people’s defenders and human rights advocates, mediating conflicts and exercising oversight over the police.

Barros Nunes said this “innovation” would be capable of reducing crime rates, although perhaps not in large cities, where community dynamics are less favourable to such a strategy.

“All studies point to citizen oversight of the police as key to reducing violence,” said Barros Nunes, who added that this is the common element present in all successful experiences.