The helpless defense: Notes on the role of Brazilian public defenders in sentence enforcement proceedings.

The article exposes and analyzes the potentialities and limits of the activities of public defenders who work in Brazilian criminal sentence enforcement courts. It is the result of a work of systematization of different research experiences carried out in recent years: an ethnographic research with...

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Published in:Crime, Law & Social Change Vol. 79; no. 5; pp. 581 - 603
Main Author: Godoi, Rafael
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Jul2023
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Jul2023
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        atl: The helpless defense: Notes on the role of Brazilian public defenders in sentence enforcement proceedings.
      aug:
        au: Godoi, Rafael
        affil: Graduate Program in Sociology and Anthropology (PPGSA), Research Center On Citizenship, Conflict and Urban Violence (NECVU), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
      su:
        São Paulo (Brazil)
        Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
        Brazil
        Public defenders
        Criminal justice system
        Legal services
        Criminal sentencing
        Justice administration
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          Public defenders
          Criminal justice system
          Legal services
          Criminal sentencing
          Justice administration
          São Paulo (Brazil)
          Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
          Brazil
          Other Justice, Public Order, and Safety Activities
          All Other Legal Services
          Legal Counsel and Prosecution
      ab: The article exposes and analyzes the potentialities and limits of the activities of public defenders who work in Brazilian criminal sentence enforcement courts. It is the result of a work of systematization of different research experiences carried out in recent years: an ethnographic research with the Public Defender's Office of São Paulo and a documentary research on criminal sentence enforcement proceedings in the state of Rio de Janeiro. After making some general considerations about the role of public legal assistance in the Brazilian criminal justice system, the article explores the role of public defenders in some key moments of a sentence enforcement process: in the elaboration of a request of benefit; in the inspection of procedural records; in the monitoring of the processing time of the court; and, finally, in the defense at administrative processes of disciplinary infractions. In all those situations it is possible to perceive the aporetic or paradoxical character of the public defenders' operations. On the one hand, their intervention in sentence enforcement proceedings appears to be absolutely essential, triggering the rights and benefits that make the prison population flow through the prisons in Brazil. On the other hand, public defenders appear as agents that are absolutely powerless, if not entirely useless, because they are incapable of making the justice system observe, in due course, the most ordinary subjective rights of a convict.
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    language: English
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