Criminalidade violenta

• Autor(a) principal: Quaresma, Carla Carina Pardal Cardoso Freire
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/91303
• topic: Criminalidade violenta; Medição do crime; Severidade criminal; Segurança interna; Sistema de Justiça Penal; Políticas públicas; Violent crime; Measuring crime; Crime severity; Internal security; Criminal justice system; Public policies; Direito

Violent crime represents a serious violation of human rights and threatens the development of individuals, society and states. For its effective prevention and fight it is essential that the (re)definition of public policies, particularly of internal security, be supported by comprehensive analyzes of the criminal reality, for which adequate measurement methods are essential. The main objectives of this investigation were to reflect on the concept of violent crime, to evaluate its variations/trends found in Portugal, to propose measures to assess its severity and to analyze the progress of cases throughout the various stages of the criminal process. A large set of exploratory interviews with representatives of entities of the criminal justice system and experts on the subject was carried out, after which a questionnaire was developed and applied to access perceptions of professionals who deal with this reality at a national level (N= 651). At the same time, data on recorded crimes, inquiry stage results, court decisions, and national criminal records were analyzed. There are two official definitions of violent crime in Portugal, one for statistical purposes and the other for legal purposes, with crime overlap between them being less than 50%. According to the definition used in the Annual Internal Security Report, between 2008 and 2017, an average annual rate of change of -3,4% is registered, however, through the definition foreseen at the Criminal Procedure Code, this rate is 1%. Among professionals interviewed positions are divergent; comparing opposing perceptions, the one that indicates the existence of an increase in violent crime in the last 10 years, in quantitative terms and of its severity, prevails. Crossing the estimate of recorded violent crimes that reaches the trial stage with the proportion of convictions to effective arrest, at one end is homicide (in every 100 records, 74 result in conviction and 66 are sentenced to effective arrest) and in other end is domestic violence (in every 100 records, 6 result in conviction, and in less than one case a sentence of effective arrest is decreed: 0,4). Considering data from national criminal record, some indicators were analyzed which may reflect an increase in criminal severity in homicides (2010-2017), namely an increase in convictions for qualified homicide, along with a decrease in convictions for simple homicide. Proposals are presented and discussed for the revision of the concept of violent crime, for developing criminal severity indexes (between and within crimes), and for other measures to improve the Portuguese criminal statistics system, aiming a contribution for strategic planning at the level of public policies in order to guarantee the right to security, respecting the principle of equality.