Brazilian penal state

Abstract

This production aims to guide a discussion about the penal state in Brazil, recovering, historically, its roots, contradictions and forms of action. The method used for the radical apprehension of reality is the historical-dialectical materialist method. The form of action that we call the penal state is therefore configured as part and necessary expression of the domination and submission of dependent capitalism both with regard to the overexploitation of the working class, as well as in the coercion and defense-negation of rights. It is concluded that the perspective of the penal state should not be reduced to the penal-prison spectrum, thus repeatedly erasing the violence that sustains the form of state action in dependent capitalism. Therefore, the Social Service has an ethical responsibility – as a position, not an ethics in the abstract to guide the discussion on the penal state, otherwise it will only be guiding the refractions of the social question, in the same way as the state acts. The radical critique, which goes to the root, must necessarily guide the criminal state in all its subterfuges and ways of appearing.