Entre a repressão e a regulamentação: o jogo do bicho e as apostas esportivas online sob a ótica do processo penal brasileiro

Abstract

This study examines the Brazilian legal-criminal treatment of gambling through the contrast between the persistent criminalization of the jogo do bicho and the recent regulation of online sports betting (bets). It argues that this normative duality does not stem from material differences between the practices, but from political-criminal choices shaped by economic, moral, and social criteria, which historically structure a pattern of penal selectivity. The research analyzes the historical origins of the jogo do bicho, its links to popular culture and the criminalization of marginalized groups, as well as the institutionalization of online sports betting under a discourse of modernization, fiscal revenue, and administrative regulation. It further explores the consequences of this asymmetry for criminal typicity, the definition of predicate offenses in money laundering prosecutions, and the functioning of criminal procedure, highlighting the coexistence of an expansive penal approach toward stigmatized practices and a subsidiary penal model applied to market-integrated activities. Finally, the paper assesses the role of the Judiciary in partially restraining punitive excesses and in functionally redefining the concept of gambling, while also identifying the limits of judicial action in light of the persistence of anachronistic criminal contraventions. The study concludes that overcoming normative incoherence and penal selectivity requires a critical reassessment of gambling criminal policy, grounded in the principles of minimal criminal law, equality before the law, and criminal intervention as ultima ratio, in accordance with the Democratic Rule of Law.