Brazilian punitive state: indeterminacy between democracy and authoritarianism

Abstract

The central theme of this article is the growing investment in combating crime by the current democratic governments in Brazil, which contributes to consolidate also among us, the figure of “punitive state.” The current capitalist arrangement generalizes almost instantaneously across the globe, tying the success of the new economic businesses considering criminal policy. Accordingly, the punitive state characterizes an ambiguity that is symbolically the portrait of the contemporary political moment. Put another way, around this control, thoroughly contradictory concepts are mixed as democracy and authoritarianism. Present in recent sociological reflections of Loïc Wacquant, David Garland, Nils Christie, Zygmunt Bauman and Giorgio Agamben, among others, this theme also begins to be discussed by the national academic community. The paper therefore aims to address what has been called “punitive state,” political figure who portrays the economic, social and cultural changes already underway in the last thirty years and that rises in Brazil as an increasingly hegemonic control.