CRIMINOLOGY AND RACISM: RACIAL SELECTIVITY IN THE BRAZILIAN PUNITIVE SYSTEM IN A CRIMINOLOGICAL APPROACH

Abstract

In Brazil, it appears that blacks are found in considerable numerical superiority in the prison population, as well as record higher penalties than other individuals for committing the same crimes. These facts show the inheritance of the race factor in terms of the imposition of condemnatory criminal sentences. In this vein, as one of the causes of this iniquity, the influence of bioanthropological theories developed by the Italian Positiva School stands out, which gave rise to the racial etiological paradigm and with it the figure of the born criminal, people who, by enduring certain physical characteristics and and/or anatomical, were born destined to the commission of crimes. In this logic, a group of individuals was being built who were a danger to society and, for this reason, should be watched, controlled, repressed and punished. Faced with these setbacks, we seek to know the extent to which racism can be understood from the analysis undertaken by the Positiva Criminological School as a key to understanding selective punitive practices in Brazil. of black people in Brazil, based on the theories inaugurated by Positivist Criminology. For this purpose, deductive narrative bibliographic research was carried out, through books, scientific articles, theses and dissertations. Finally, we conclude that the reception and translation of positivist criminological theories in the Brazilian context served as an instrument for the conservation of the social control of the black race in the post-abolition of slavery, in addition to providing a scientific character to the criminalization of blacks, thus culminating in the Historical racial selectivity of the Brazilian punitive system.