A nova lei de abuso de autoridade: os reflexos do direito penal simbólico na lei 13.869 de 2019

Abstract

At the beginning of the year 2020, the new law of abuse of authority came into force, which expressly revoked the outdated previous law that dealt with the subject (Law 4898/65) and other legal instruments, bringing new criminal types in its core. It so happens that the way in which the rule was issued was widely criticized and its elaboration process took place precisely in the middle of Operation Lava Jato, which condemned and carried out the arrest of several parliamentarians for various crimes, giving rise to the interpretation that the law it would have the intention of stopping the performance of magistrates, prosecutors and police in the fight against corruption, suffering from illegalities. In this context, through extensive bibliographic research and based on the principles and foundations of Constitutional Criminal Law, the present work, by the deductive method, and by the analysis of the main points of the norm, aims to examine whether this law can become effective in combating abuse of authority, given the inoperability found in the previous law, as well as if this rule represents any obstacle in the performance of public agents in the performance of criminal prosecution, however, the new Law of Abuse of Authority proved to be merely symbolic, given that the need for proof of specific purposes and the open criminal types show their inefficiency in protecting the legal good, as well as in criminal liability of the offending agent. Faced with this inapplicability, finally, the aim is still to raise other more effective ways of fighting against the excesses committed by authorities than the criminalization of their conduct, especially those based on the inspection and control of the acts of public agents.