The reduction of the age of criminal responsibility in debate

Uruguay y Brasil (2012 y 2016)

Abstract

This article presents a comparative study of the contexts and factors that led to the resurgence of proposals for lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16 years, in Uruguay and Brazil, in the period from 2012 to 2016. It is possible to identify regional dynamics of criminalization of poverty and youth taking as variables of study: the increase in the rates of youth imprisonment, mainly adolescents, and the criminal upsurge through more punitive policies and legislation (punitive advance). Greater attention is given to the socio-historical-cultural aspects of these dynamics and to the relations established between politics and penalty in a context of neoliberal hegemony. The central matter is: why are similar proposals made for contexts that, apparently, are different? Therefore it is proposed to identify and understand how these processes occur, the continuities and discontinuities with their past, and verify that they are not reduced exclusively to internal dynamics of "national tissues" but are due, in a certain way, to their own history and regional reality. The time frame of this thesis is between 2012 and 2016, taking as a reference the strong (re)start of the debate in Uruguay through the approval of a constitutional plebiscite to lower the age of imputability, and the reopening of the process in Brazil in 2015 with a similar proposal (which is still under discussion in the Brazilian parliament).