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The subtraction of penalty age
from 18 to 16 is a solution to end with the violence
in Brazil?
There
is people that wants to subtract the penalty age from
18 to 16, or as, become a crime the infracionary actions
of teenagers. As an apology, they speak that if someone
can vote at the age of 16, can also answer criminally
for their actions. There are those that say that the
adults are incentivated to practice crimes using the
teenagers because nothing happens to them. There are
people that argue that the advanced countries have the
penalty age inferior to the Brazilian. Finally, there
are those that guarantee that the responsible for the
raise of violence is the Statute of Child and Adolescent
– ECA, which only defends the rights for the child
and the teenager and doesn’t show their duties.
Using
these and other arguments, some TV and radio programs
exploit the subject showing cases involving violent
teenagers that steel or even kill. At the population,
conducted by the emotion, it is seeded the idea that
the solution is to order these teenagers to jail.
Like
the text of Pe. Joacir Della Giustina, of Pastoral do
Menor, the last census showed that the Brazilian teenagers
– 12 to 18 years old – sum 20 millions. Already
the number of steeling adolescents is of 20
thousand, or as, 0,1% of the population. Of these
20 thousand, a little more than 6 thousand are needing
internation, or as, 14 thousand
are not of high periculosity. While there is
87 dangerous crimes done
by adults for each 100 thousand inhabitants,
there is only 2,7 dangerous
crimes done by teenagers for the same population,
being 70% of these crimes are mugs and not a try to
take the other person’s life.
Recently,
the Brazilian congress decided to veto the liberation
of the Driver’s license for those below 18 years
old by considering that the adolescent is immature and
irresponsible. The teenager that can already vote with
16 years of age, but is prohibited to occupy any public
chair as town councillor (minimum age of 18 years old),
mayor (21 years old), commissioner (21 years old), governor
(30 years old), senator or republican president (35
years old). Why? It is the common sense to say that
the to exercise certain public chairs is necessary to
have responsibility and consciousness. The statement
makes contradiction the argument that states that the
teenagers with 16 years old already have judgement and,
therefore, can be judicially responsible for his/her
actions.
The
diminution of the penal age puts at risk all the conquests
that were made about the child and adolescent’s
rights. The Statute is obvious when it establishes
punishment for the infractor adolescent and ways for
the return to the social life. At the articles 101 and
112 of the Statute are described measures of protection
and social-educative: warning, obligation to repair
the damage, volunteer work to the community, assisted
liberty, insertion at regime of semi-liberty, internation
at educational establishment – meaning, also, privation
of liberty.
These
measures, more right and appropriated to the teenager
at development, are even more efficient than the simple
diminution of the penal age and the following entering
of the teenager at the precarious Brazilian penitentiary
system. The responsibility for them to be applied is
of the government, with the help of the society. Many
well succeeded experience shows that, when there is
political desire and responsible people, the programs
get out of the paper and turns into reality.
Clóvis Boufleur
National Assessor of REBIDIA
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