REDUCTION OF PENAL MAJORITY IN BRAZIL: ANALYSIS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE REGULATION OF POVERTY BY THE PENAL STATE AND CHILDREN'S RIGHTS

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate that the scenario of penal insecurity and the exaltation of the punitive State installed in contemporary Brazilian society, with consequent punitive media discourse around the Constitutional Amendment Proposals (PECs) that deal with the reduction of the legal age of majority from 18 to 16 years of age, raised to the condition of stone clause in the Brazilian Constitution, It represents a paradox in the post-capitalist society of crises, inequalities and diversified “youths” in diverse contexts. This legal-political-social scenario is demonstrating a notable weakening of the justice system and guarantees of children's rights regulated by the ECA (Statute of Children and Adolescents, Law No. 8090/1990), being a transparent effect of the decline of the Welfare State, whose symbolic criminal hardening by incarceration punishes poverty and camouflages the syndrome of ineffectiveness of fundamental rights. In this sense, through doctrinal research and the analytical and deductive method, it will be demonstrated that the criminalization of the conduct of adolescents from 16 years of age manifests a state of social phobia and criminal insecurity with the imposition of penal regulation, being the adoption of PEC an unconstitutional measure that affronts the Democratic Rule of Law.