Pena de morte: um suplício contemporâneo e retorno à barbárie.

Abstract

Based on a recent fact, which has been widely presented in Brazil in early 2015 and broadly discussed in the media, about the shooting of a Brazilian man in Indonesia, arrested for drug trafficking in 2003 and sentenced under the laws of that country. The application of death penalty is a controversial and old topic, it has existed since the 7th century BC and today is present in punitive practices of many nations. Considering this paradigm, the present study compares the punitive practices of the seventeenth century, addressed in the work of Michel Foucault "Discipline and Punish", with the application of death penalty nowadays. The aim is also to present that it is not the death penalty that will solve the problem of criminality, going back with an idea that grew in the medieval bonfires and dictatorial regimes, being put into practice in full threshold of 21st century. It is noted that the real crime prevention is not done by increasing the severity of penalties, introduction of new typical figures, reduction of criminal age, rigorism in execution and other means which clearly have not been successful, apart from offending principles of universal rights of the human person.