Impunity in Brazil

causes and consequences

Abstract

The article seeks to understand the causes and consequences of impunity in Brazil. With this purpose, the article treats impunity as a consequence of institutional and structural factors that survive and have been reaffirmed in the Brazilian society over the decades. The institutional and structural causes of impunity –the system of appeals, the prescription of crime, the lack of state capacity, and the socioeconomic vulnerability of certain social groups– are determinants for the creation of a culture that normalizes non-compliance of sentences, the lack of speed in the trials and the application of soft sentences. With the aim of examining these causes and their manifestations in several areas, the article identified four emblematic cases –the killing of teenagers in front of the Church of Candelaria in Rio de Janeiro in 1993, the murder of rubber tapper Chico Mendes in 1988, corruption in the Budget Committee of the National Chamber of Deputies in 1994 and the rupture of the mineral waste dam in Mariana in 2015– illustrating the existence of institutional and structural factors that foster impunity. Through these cases, the article contemplates several crimes that include corruption and environmental crimes as well as collective murder and focuses on the resolution of each of the cases, highlighting the elements of impunity. The analysis shows high levels of impunity that reveal the constant inability of the State and society in Brazil to carry out justice.