O aumento na adoção de penas e medidas alternativas à prisão pode ser benéfico à sociedade brasileira?

Abstract

In 2020, Brazil had the third largest prison population in the world, with 678,506 prisoners, an occupancy rate of 151.88%, with 29.81% of provisional prisoners. However, there are alternative forms of punishment that could help to alleviate these problems. In this context, the aim of this research was to identify the objective and the set of criminal penalties existing in Brazil and, based on the possible impacts of these measures identified in empirical research, to verify whether the expansion in the adoption of alternative measures to incarceration can be beneficial for the brazilian society. This research was divided into three phases. Through a bibliographic search, with qualitative characteristics, the characteristics of the brazilian penalty system were identified and presented. After this contextualization, in an exploratory way, empirical researches were selected and analyzed in the main magazines, periodicals and sources of empirical studies that addressed impact analysis of the application of prison as a punishment measure and the adoption of penalties and alternative measures to prison. With the analysis of the focus and the results of these empirical studies, then, it was possible to verify that the brazilian system of penalties is adequate, as it provides a multiplicity of alternative penalties, has a progressive nature and already has mechanisms to substitute imprisonment for other measures, but can be improved with wider mechanisms of individualization and personalization of the penalty. In addition, it was concluded that brazilian society could benefit from the increase in the adoption of these alternative measures that already exist, since these options achieve the objectives of the penalty with lower costs to society, reduce recidivism rates and the severity of future criminal conduct, may to be an instrument of early release, improve the prospects and future stigma of the condemned himself and make possible the existence of non-criminogenic prisons.