Estado punitivo e pós-modernidade

Abstract

This article presents the increasing investment in fighting crime by contemporary democracies, which helps to consolidate, also in Brazil, the image of the punitive State. Inserted in the recent sociological reflections of Loïc Wacquant, David Garland, Nils Christie and Zygmunt Bauman, among others, this theme is still little discussed by the national academic community. The current capitalist arrangement is generalized, almost instantaneously, around the globe, tying the economic enterprises' success to the new criminal policy face. This article, therefore, aims to offer an alternative approach to reflections on social control, by addressing the so-called punitive State which adjusts to the economic, social and cultural transformations, already under way in the last thirty years, and that, according to some contemporary theorists, inaugurated the post-modernity.