Political and Legal Response to Brazil’s June Days: an Analysis of Judicialization and Criminalization in the City of Porto Alegre

Abstract

The Protests that started in the city of Porto Alegre in 2013 against the rise in public transportation prices have spread out all over Brazil, especially in June, when over one and a half million people went to the streets to protest against increases in bus fares in over one hundred cities. Not only were they marked by mass participation, but also by a serious level of state violence in response, especially in Porto Alegre where the City Council’s Human Rights Commission denounced police violence and the first indictment against activists was discussed. This article seeks to identify how political and legal systems have dealt with this social movement by analyzing the processes of primary and secondary criminalization in the city of Porto Alegre. As such, it analyzes new protest regulations, the "Human Rights Violation" document, as well as the official police report and investigation documents regarding the Protests in the perspective of Critical Criminology. By utilizing the theoretical concept that deviance should be analyzed as a dyad – the rationality behind the prohibition and enforcement, as well as the reasons for the commission of an act, the concept of moral entrepreneurs from Howard Becker and the criteria elaborated by Jock Young in defining a moral panic. The paper attempts to contribute in the analysis of how the political and legal systems act towards social movements that present a challenging response to the existing circumstances.