Tecnologias de poder e corpo humano: imagens de cidadania criminal

Abstract

The research analyses the relation between citizenship and Criminal Law. Mechanisms of torture, the handcuffs and, finally, the electronic anklet are examined considering them as technologies of power of the State that practice direct action onto the human bodies of those individuals considered as Law violators. Images which scatter around Criminal Law domain are identified. Each image indicates a given action of the State and reveals a certain dimension of citizenship. The role developed by Criminal Law is evaluated, concerning the concreteness of fundamental human rights historically built in the core of Brazilian society, all in honor to the principles of proportionality and humanization of penalties. The study supports the adoption of minimal penal intervention security policies, respecting, above all, the dignity of the human body. Even more, the use of criminal instruments which attack directly the body is rejected, such as chemical castration in sexual offenses. The need for actualization of citizenship practices in the penal field is pointed out. The thesis justification lays on two reasons. The first, regards the relevance of the discussion about limits for the right to punish, maximal expression of State s sovereignty. The second refers to the currency of new technologies of social control which permeate the contemporary society, what can compromise human dignity, master foundation that politically drives the enforcement of 1988 s Constitutional Text