Human rights, zero tolerance: the paradoxes of punitive violence in a democratic state of law

Abstract

Observed today, the consolidation of an authentic punitive culture in Brazil, capable of naturalizing the punitive damages will be launched on the social structure. Thus, notwithstanding the Constitution of 1988 enshrines citizenship and human dignity as the foundation of the democratic rule of law and state as one of its goals the eradication of poverty and marginalization, a large contingent of the population survives stripped of their most basic rights and becomes the target of state punitive violence, powerful instrument of control of the marginalized sectors. With the adoption of practices supported by a speech made on the basis of (ir) rationality and contemporary totalitarian-inspired zero-tolerance policies, we see the rise of a State which proposes the universal human rights, but at the same time, promotes suppression of rights and guarantees and the intensification of inequality and exclusion.