Fábio Medina Osório defends integration between the economic agenda and the anti-crime agenda in a contribution to the blog “O Antagonista”
Article on the blog 'O Antagonista', on 06/02/2019, defending the joint processing of the anti-crime package and the pension reform.
Translated from the original.
In an article sent to O Antagonista, lawyer Fábio Medina Osório, former Attorney General of Brazil, hammers home what we said earlier: the anti-crime package and the pension reform must go hand in hand.
“The economic development agenda depends on a solid fight against corruption and urban and rural violence,” he writes. “There is no basis for speaking of a stalling of pension reform, or of any other reform, as a result of the progress of bills associated with combating economic and violent crime.”
Medina also highlights what he considers most important in Moro’s package. According to him, the initiative reinforces a line of orientation already enshrined by the STF regarding the principle of the presumption of innocence in Brazilian criminal procedural law, giving it its correct dimension.
“I understand, in this regard, that the bill may even soften criticism from those who maintained that there were risks of excess in a possibly draconian orientation of the courts, in the face of the possible consolidation of a position of the STF along the harsher line that had already been imagined.”
Another point that deserves attention, he says, concerns the reinforcement of the execution of custodial sentences, pecuniary penalties, and restrictions-of-rights penalties.
“The principle of the effectiveness of sanctions is accepted, which reflects significant progress in mindset. What really matters is the imposition of penalties, their effective enforcement, from a certain stage. The execution of a sentence is what matters, in order to combat the sense of impunity in Brazil.”
With regard to combating criminal organizations, “one moves toward a denser conceptualization, even drawing on lessons from criminal sociology, seeking to attack entities that operate on the concrete plane of society.”
“Resorting to more open concepts, combined with conceptualizations tied to entities known from criminal sociology, will allow a more refined screening of indictments and investigations involving criminal organizations, with a major impact on criminal policy.”
The former Attorney General of Brazil also highlights the important legal tools proposed, such as genetic profile identification, ‘good informants,’ and police infiltration of criminal organizations.
“This national genetic profile bank will be built immediately after the approval of the Law, provided the necessary infrastructure is available, since prisoners serving sentences must undergo collection of the material, which will serve investigative purposes.”
According to him, Congress and the government itself will certainly be able to improve the bill, “but it is commendable that there is such exquisite material to work with, the fruit of practical experience and of the good faith of public men who suffered from impunity in this country.”