"A polícia prende e a justiça solta"? Um olhar sobre as audiências de custódia em Natal/RN

Abstract

The study presented here addresses the recent proposal to implement the custody hearing in the State of Rio Grande do Norte, its project and implementation at the national and local levels. Based on the ethnographic research, I try to understand the procedures of the custody audience, the representation of the actors involved and interpret the speeches of different actors of the system (defenders, police officers, judges, flagrantados and relatives) in this context. In a second moment, I observe how the forms of access to justice are given by the flagrantados and try to identify their profiles in the light of the concept of criminal subjection, proposed by Misse (1999). I also discuss the episodes of institutional and police violence reported by them and demonstrate how, at those hearings, human rights are perceived as being linked only to the defense of bad guys rather than elementary rights. Finally, I think of the custody hearing as a space of disputes and coverups, which become more evident as the actors interact with each other and seek to manipulate the social roles they play. In conclusion, I realized that, despite the formulation of new guidelines to reduce the rates of imprisonment in the country (the project of which custody hearings are a part), the measures in force remain the same. It is therefore necessary to reflect on these data so that custody hearings, for example, can be effective in what they propose, ie: to accelerate the process; contribute to avoiding the provisional arrest rates (which are very high in the country); to curb the practices of torture and aim at the protection of human rights and their actual realization. Only in this way, perhaps, can we achieve a more humane look at the flagrantean (and his family members) and, perhaps, come closer to a more equitable notion of justice.