Abstract

MAGALHAES, Maria Manuela  and  GUIMARAES, Ana Paula. Changes and Wanderings in the Fight against Criminality and in Defense of Society. Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais [online]. 2018, n.117, pp.5-26. ISSN 2182-7435.  https://doi.org/10.4000/rccs.8070.

The growing sense of insecurity of the population will require greater, swifter and more effective performance from the State’s punitive power. This claim has come to denote a patent determination to obtain a hard and rigid model of criminal justice. In this way, the legislator, not immune to the complaints of the population, but also in consequence of trivial populisms, ends up giving in and introducing changes in criminal procedural law responding to the phenomenon of vindication. The punitive and security tendency turns out to be one that is likely to narrow the guarantees of the defendants, who are also citizens. And it is precisely this aspect of the debatable trilogy “security, freedom, administration of criminal justice”, which is the subject of this reflection. Thus, we have tried to make a contribution regarding some changes in Portuguese criminal procedural law that have impacted certain rights of the accused.

Keywords : criminal justice; criminal procedure; fight against crime; Portugal; State intervention.

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